Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920

Spirited Lives How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836 - 1920

Carol K Cobzarn and Martha Smith

The University of North Carolina

Press

Chapel Hill and London

01999 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Designed by April Leidig-Higgins Typeset in Monotype Garamond by Running Feet Books Manufactured in the United States of America The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coburn, Carol K Spirited lives: how nuns shaped Catholic culture and American life, 1836-1920 / by Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN

0-8078-z473-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN

0-8078-4774-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

I.

Nuns-United

States-History.

religious orders for women-United

z. Monasticism and

States-History

3. Monastic and reIigious life of women-United States-History. History.

I.

4. Catholic Church-United

Smith, Martha, 1928 Sept. 7-

~ ~ 4 2 2 0 . ~ 61999 ~ 6 3 27 i1.9007~-dc21

11.

StatesTitle.

98-30828

CIP

Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xj Introduction

I

The French Connection: Founders, Origins, and Early Activities I 3 Creating an American Identity: Survival and Expansion in the American Milieu 41 Educating the Good Sister: Gender and Religious Identity 67 Expanding American Catholic Culture: The Trans-Mississippi West 97 Promulgating the Faith: Parochial Schools and American Catholic Identity I 29 Educating for Catholic Womanhood: Secondary Academies and Women's Colleges I 7 9 Succoring the Needy: Nursing, Hospitals, and Social Services I 89 Epilogue

22 I

Notes 227 Selected Bibliography go3

First csj convent in Carondelet, Missouri Sister Celestine Pommerel Members of the Ireland family Young postulant dressed as a bride before receiving the habit Irish "recruits" for csj communities Young grls feedmg the chckens at St. Joseph's Girls' Home Sister Monica Corrigan and her sister companions csjs and Native American students at San Xavier del Bac Mission Our Lady of Lourdes School St. Vincent de Paul School, first csj parochial school Music class at St. Peter's School Sister Francis Joseph Ivory and her class Senior class, St. Joseph's Institute Physics class, St. Teresa's Academy Latin class at the College of St. Catherine Art class at the College of St. Catherine Horse-drawn ambulance in front of St. Mary's Hospital

197

csj nurses and soldiers in the military hospital at Matanzas, Cuba

204 2 10

21

6

Surgery, St. Mary's Hospital Immigrant child before and after entering Aemilianum Orphan Asylum Toddlers at lunch, St. Joseph's Infant Home

viii ( Illustrations

Preface In many ways ours has been an unlikely collaboration. Separated by religion, ethnicity, professional background, life experience, and age, a fifthgeneration German Lutheran, American historian began a professional collaboration with a fourth-generation Irish Catholic, European historian, who has spent her entire adult life in a religious community. In May I 990, we began researching, discussing, debating, and teaching each other as we interacted with the rich primary sources. Exchangng ideas on scholarship, methodology, and religous and life experiences became a way of life as the project unfolded. We spent years immersed in research and thousands of hours in conversation, one of us learning to think and talk like a "Catholic" and the other learning to think and talk like a "feminist," both of us expanding our worldview and realizing that much was to be gained from listening to the other. We challenged each others' perceptions on the historical context of gender, religion, and power, modifying each others' assumptions (if not stereotypes),even as we challenged ourselves and each other to be bold in our writing and analysis. This collaboration allowed us to use our insider-outsider viewpoints that we believe bring a balanced and unique perspective to the work. In the jargon of late-twentieth-century discourse this could be called "feminist collaboration" or, using the language of the nineteenth-century convent, our joint project could be described as avoiding "singularity." In reality, it is probably a little of both. From the beginning, however, our goals were shared. We intended to place Catholic sisters within the mainstream of American history and women's history, and show the sisters' lives and activities to be as complex, varied, and interesting as the lives of their Protestant and secular peers. We intended for our research not only to explore commonalities and differences between these women's groups but to examine further the intersection of gender, religion, and power in nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury America. Catholic nuns struggled with the barriers inherent in

gender, religion, class, race, and ethnicity in both the American Catholic culture and the larger American public culture. We believe this book makes an important beginning toward understanding their lives and experiences within the context of their time. Carol Coburn and Martha Smith Kansas City, lbkssouri May 1998

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Preface

Acknowledgment.. As with most large historical projects, collaboration extends far beyond the authors, and this research is certainly no exception. We would like to thank all the archivists at the four csj provincial archives and the generalate, particularly Sisters Charline Sullivan, Mary Kxaft, Mary Ellen Sprouffske,Anne Xavier Boyle, Elizabeth Deutsch, and Patricia Kelly. The list of csjs who have talked with us, supported us, and provided meals and accommodations is endless, and we thank you for your support when we were guests in your cities, convents, and institutions. A special thanks to Sisters Margery Smith, Mary Ann Lavin, Marie Damien Adams, Alberta Cammack, Catherine McCaffrey, and Mary Margaret Lazio, and Denver archvist Sister Ann Walter, OSB. Sister Germaine Matter and Virgmia May Palmer provided translations for important csj documents, and Anita Pilegg spent hours transcribing taped interviews. The analysis of the csj Profession Book could not have been completed without the computer expertise of Cathy Bogart, who created a database for the demographic information, and Molly McNamara, who provided data entry. A heartfelt thanks to Avila College and our colleagues and friends, particularly to the Humanities Department whose patience and support during Carol's sabbatical allowed the writing to happen. A special thanks to Sister Marie Joan Harris, vice president and academic dean, for her personal interest and for supporting sabbatical leaves and faculty grants for both of us throughout the project. We would also like to thank the staff of the Hooley-Bundschu Library at Avila College, particularly Mary Woods and Kathleen Finegan, who always fit our requests into their busy schedules and provided continuous and helpful support. We would like to thank our readers, Kathryn Kish Sklar and Mary J. Oates, who provided careful analysis, helpful suggestions, and encouraging words for our manuscript. Also, our heartfelt thanks to Elaine Maisner and

the staff at the University of North Carolina Press for their professional expertise and support. Finally, Carol would like to thank Kathryn IGsh Sklar, Thomas Dublin, and her fellow participants in the National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar at SUNY-Binghamton during the summer of 1996. The financial and intellectual support was most helpful and stimulating and came at a very opportune time in this research.

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Acknowledgments

ment, the young nuns learned that in early-nineteenth-century America, Catholic women religious traveled in disguise to avoid insults and the possibllity of being labeled "escaped T h s inauspicious beginning is representative of the initial foundings of many religious communities of women in the United States. Most began with a small band of women-European-, Canadian-, or American-born -who began living and working together in spiritual, emotional, physical, and economic support networks that eventually spanned every regon of the country. After the initial Ursuhne foundation in New Orleans in 1727, Catholic women religous3 expanded their numbers to 46,000 by I 900. By 1920, approximately 90,000 women, representing over 300 separate religous communities, were working in American education, health care, or social service institution^.^ The expansion of American Catholic culture and identity and its subsequent influence in American society could not have occurred without the activities and labor of these women. The proliferation of schools, hospitals, and orphanages boggles the contemporary mind. By I 920, Catholic sisters had created and/or maintained approximately joo hospitals, yo women's colleges, and over 6,000 parochial schools, serving 1.7 millton schoolchildren in every region of the country, both urban and rural.5 These figures do not include the vast number of orphanages, private academies, schools for the handicapped, homes for unwed mothers, homes for working girls, and homes for the elderly also conducted by the nuns. Bishops vied for opportunities to lure sisters to their dioceses and boasted about the numbers and types of institutions under their jurisdiction, most of which were staffed, if not owned, by women religous. American Catholics, whose numbers exploded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, maintained a network of support and services that insured the transmission of Catholic values, culture, and education from generation to generation. What made this possible, and how did American sisters help create such a legacy that has lasted to the end of the twentieth century? To understand the role that women religious played in the shaping of Catholic culture and American life, it is necessary to examine gender, religon, and power within the convent culture and how nuns functioned withm the church and within American society. The religous community is one of the oldest and least analyzed of women's groups in the United States. As a woman-defined space and culture within the highly structured American Catholic Church, it provides an intriguing challenge to hisz

I Introduction

torians of women to expand our understanding of nineteenth-century women's culture within a patriarchal setting that had the potential to exploit or co-opt women's work and contributions. Common myths and stereotypes of Catholic nuns conceal complex realities in the lives of these women who struggled to achieve ambitious goals in an environmentsecular and religous-that offered many obstacles. Historically seen as docile handmaidens and submissive suborhates in the expansion and growth of the Catholic Church, nuns have only recently become subjects of serious scholarship. Caught in a double bind of gender and religious marginality, American sisters have consistently been ignored by scholars of Catholic history and women's history.This is a remarkable omission since the majority of Catholic schools, hospitals, and charitable agencies available in the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century United States were created and/or maintained by American nuns. Although historically almost invisible, American sisters were some of the best educated and most publicly active women of their time. Talented and ambitious women from working-class and middle-class backgrounds, regardless of ethnicity, advanced to teaching, nursing, administration, and other leadership positions in Catholic religious communities. The reverend mothers or superiors general of these religous congregations functioned as some of the first female CEOS,administering institutions, personnel, and financial resources throughout the country.' Although women religous had freedoms unknown to most other nineteenth-century women, this fact easily escapes notice because of the powerful and pervasive stereotype of nuns as otherworldly creatures, naive and unassuming, sheltered from the secular world. Nineteenth-century gender ideology and convent education helped maintain and reinforce this stereotype. Like Protestants, Catholic clergy and laity accepted gender ideology very similar to the pervasive model of Victorian womanhood that encouraged piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. One scholar argues that "domestic ideology never was limited to advocates of a single theological persuasion. . . . American Catholics adopted all the accoutrements of domesticity without notable theological ~hange."~ The public image of Catholic nuns supported and reinforced this gender ideology. Women religious also learned to adopt "convent manners," whlch meant they were encouraged to avoid "singularity," or attempts to stand out in any way.9 However, the daily reality of many sisters' lives demonstrates how their behavior and activities expanded far beyond expectations based on ideology and training. Like other nineteenth- and early-twentiethIntroduction

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century churchwomen, they learned to work within the confines of traditional ideology while expanding and reinterpreting their gender and religous activities. In developing and sustaining multiple institutions, the sisters interacted with laity of all ethnic and socioeconomic classes, from clerics, attorneys, doctors, and bankers to solders, miners, orphans, and schoolchildren. Some members of the religious community traveled extensively to secure monetary and material gifts for their institutions. Catholic nuns were free of the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood and had opportunities to live in female settings where egalitarian friendships flouri~hed.'~ In t h ~ sstudy, we analyze this convent culture and demonstrate how religous communities of women shaped the creation, development, and extent of American Catholic culture and its subsequent impact on American life. Vastly outnumbering male religious and clergy, the sisters dtrectly impacted the lives of immigrant and native-born Americans, Catholic and Protestant, through their teaching, nursing, and other service activities." The sisters' convent communities and female-defined networks provided physical, emotional, economic, and spiritual sustenance for themselves and the people they served. Far from functioning as passive handmaidens for Catholic clergy and parishes, the nuns created, financed, and administered institutions, struggling with, and at times challenging and resisting, male secular and clerical authority. Furthermore, their abihty to adapt to the frequently hostile American milieu and the rugged and often primitive conditions they encountered was firmly grounded in their view of themselves as vowed religious women. For them religion and gender were tightly bound into a single identity. Using the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (csjs) as a case study, we will ask the following questions: How did the religous community shape and form the sisters' individual and collective identity in Protestant America? How did the nuns utilize religious and gender ideology to define, justify, and expand their behavior and activities? How did the sisters deal with patriarchal power (secular and clerical) and with governance in their all-female setting? And finally, in what activities were the sisters involved, and how did these activities shape Catholic culture and American life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? We recogntze that no one congregation can be seen as "typical" of the more than joo American sisterhoods, whch included large and small, rural and urban, localized and extended, ethnically diverse and homogeneous groups, some focused on one particular activity while others engaged in 4

1

Introduction

multiple occupations. However, we believe that the csjs are quite representative of American sisterhoods because their characteristics encompassed much of the rich diversity and variety of experience of other congregations. The csjs were geographically diverse, having worked in nineteen states in every region of the United States, in large urban centers as well as small towns, mining communities, and Indian reservations. One of the largest American sisterhoods, they had a heterogeneous mix of ethnic and class membership that mirrored the larger American Catholic population. They also engaged in all three of the main activities characteristic of American nuns: education, health care, and social service. Some Catholic women's communities worked in only one of these areas, some in two,but the csjs from the earliest years worked in all three areas.12 Like many European communities of women religious, the French csjs came to the United States at the request of American clergy. In 1836, Bishop Joseph Rosati invited them to St. Louis to open a school for deaf children. By I 860, their revised "American" constitution had established a central government and effectively severed the American community's ties with the motherhouse13in France, establishmg their own American power base. Significantly, in I 872 they elected their first American-born superior general who effectively mobilized and expanded a community of ethnically diverse women, native-born American, Irish, German, French, and Canadian-born sisters, into a large religious workforce. By 1920,2,300 CSJS were supporting approximately 200 institutions including 17j elementary and secondary parish schools and private academies, two schools for the deaf, three women's colleges, ten hospitals, and nine orphanages. This massive expansion and institution building brought the csjs directly into the lives of thousands of American Catholics and into American public life.14

Religion and Gender in Women? Lives It is impossible to analyze the activities of women religious without expanding our understanding of the importance religion played in the lives of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American women. The overwhelming presence of women in American religious history in no way equates to female dominance. Likewise, women have not been passive victims within the male-defined traditions that are embedded in religious ideologies. Discussing the Judeo-Christian heritage and its importance to women, Ann Braude writes, Introduction

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There could be no lone man in the pulpit without the mass of women who fill the pews. There would be no clergy, no seminaries to train them, no theology to teach them and no hierarchies to ordain them, unless women supported all of these institutions from whch they h s torically have been and still are excluded by Catholics, conservative Protestants, and Orthodox Jews. To understand the history of religion in America, one must ask what made each group's teachings and practices meaningful to its female members.15 Discovering the ways that women have negotiated their roles within the gendered power dynamics of these religous traditions provides the key to understanding and analyzing women's contributions in the church and in the larger society. Scholars in women's history have consistently demonstrated that large numbers of Euro-American and African American women within JudeoChristian traditions used religion and the church to justify, define, and expand their role in American society. Religious beliefs and ideology have been the prime movers in many women's lives, encouraging them to enter the public realm, inviting them to behave in ways that have brought them into conflict with clerical and lay males, and allowing them to broaden Victorian ideologies defining race, class, and gender.16 With few exceptions, when religion has been researched and integrated into women's history, the studm have focused on middle- and upper-class, white Protestant women. Discussing the historiography of women and religion, Leslie Woodcock Tentler chides historians of women for their lack of interest in the study of women religious. In light of the sheer quantity of educational, charitable, health care, and social service institutions created by American nuns in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she states, "Had women under secular or Protestant auspices compiled this record of achievement, they would be today a thoroughly researched population. . . . Remedy is surely needed."" As a remedy, t l s study will attempt to place nuns within the mainstream of American history between I 836 and 1920. The rich array of scholarship demonstrating how Protestant and secular women used gender, religion, and power in the formation of women's organizations and associations in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America provides critical insights into what these women accomplished and how they felt about their work.ls Much of this information is relevant to the experiences of American sisters, and although the comparison is 6

I

Introduction

rarely made, commonalities are many. First, Protestant and secular women's groups and Catholic sisterhoods created opportunities for lifelong friendships and physical and emotional support networks, providing opportunities for shared experience and collective gender consciousness in school and work settings. Second, Catholic sisterhoods and Protestant and secular women's groups created public space for women, justifying their presence through gender-appropriate activity in charitable endeavors, hospitals, settlement houses, and schools. Third, these "public" activities helped churchwomen develop a variety of shlls, such as leadership and financial and business acumen, outside the family or home setting. Fourth, through their activities, Catholic sisterhoods and Protestant and secular women provided needed caregiving functions to society through teaching, nursing, offering support services for women, and nurturing children and the poor. American nuns were often the first organized group of white women in remote settings in the trans-Mississippi West. Finally, Catholic women religious and Protestant and secular women's organizations expanded women's public culture, allowing single women to work and live in a meaningful way in society outside of marriage and motherhood. In spite of these positive attributes of women's associations, nuns, like their Protestant and secular counterparts, suffered the negative effects of gender in a patriarchal society. Resources and activities could be limited or taken away by uncooperative males. All-female settings were often marginalized or ghettoized in patriarchal society or church. Women's organizations, activities, and finances were sometimes co-opted or dissolved because of male interference.

Unique Characteristics of Communities of Women Religous Communities of women religous fit nicely into this paradigm of women's associational and organizational characteristics used to analyze the lives of Protestant and secular women. However, the Catholic sisterhoods that flourished in the United States had four unique qualities or characteristics that made them distinctly different from Protestant women's organizations. These unique qualities-ethnic and class diversity, lifelong education and work, perpetual vows, and a distinctive environment and tradition-insured the effectiveness, longevity, and growth of American Catholic sisterhoods well into the twentieth century. For some religious communities, these qualities created an unprecedented female power base that enabled independent activity, limited patriarchal interference and Introduction

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control, and significantly shaped American Catholic culture and public life. The first distinguishing quality of religous communities was that they integrated more ethnic and class diversity than most Protestant women's organizations. In the nineteenth century, European-based communities, like the csjs, were initially ethnically homogeneous, most often French or German. Many, like the csjs, had to "Americanize" quickly to ensure survival in the United States and in so doing became ethnically diverse, reflecting the American Catholic population that provided their membership. Young German, French, and Irish immigrants and daughters of immigrants who entered the csj community in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had to set aside their own ethnic and class prejudices and focus on their identity as religious women in an American milieu. In turn, as they worked among their ethnically diverse clientele, the nuns achieved rapport and acceptance by focusing on their parishioners' Catholic and American identities.19 Elitist and class privileges prevalent in European convents had to be downplayed, if not discarded, in the more egalitarian atmosphere of the United States. Similar to many other transplanted European communities, the csjs eventually abolished the class distinction between "choir" and "lay" sisters in I 908. Working-class, middle-class, and upper-class women came together to share community identity and goals.20 Another reason for minimizing ethnic and class diversity in American religous communities was the need to overcome anti-Catholic prejudice, which was especially strong regarding cloistered religious who remained mysteriously secluded behind convent walls with no apparent purpose in society. However, cloister, in the sense of strict enclosure, was not a feature of most communities who came to America. Since the great majority of nuns came to America at the request of bishops seehng teachers, nurses, and social workers, most transplanted European communities were already engaged in these active works in their native countries. Their visible and useful contributions that served community needs helped alleviate Protestant suspicion and prejudice. The more homogeneous Protestant women's organizations rarely had to prove their Americanism or their patrioti~m.~' A second distinguishing characteristic was the sisters' approach to lifelong education and work. In every stage of a nun's community life, as postulant, novice, and professed sister, education played a significant role. Postulants and novices had a rigorous schedule that included studies in spirituality, religous exercises, church history, csj community history, music, 8

1 Introduction

vocational training, theology, study of the vows (poverty, chastity, obedience), and by the early twentieth century, formal classes in teacher training and nursing.22 Professed sisters continued their spiritual exercises and began on-thejob training for teaching, nursing, or child care. Each young sister had mentors who guided her in her work setting. The wide variety of schools, hospitals, and other social institutions provided ongoing, oftentimes intense educational experiences. Sisters were frequently moved from one setting to another as the need arose, and they typically encountered many diverse travel, work, and learning experiences in a variety of situation^.^^ Although many Protestant women spent decades of their lives involved in various religious and secular organizations, most of these women were married and had to balance organizational activities with childbirth, child rearing, and other family duties. For women religious, the community functioned as family and work, an inseparable and lifelong educational experience and commitment. A third unique quality of Catholic sisterhoods includes the tahng of perpetual vows. Women religious, including the csjs, learned to uulize their three vows (poverty, obedience, chastity) to justify, create, and control space for their public endeavors. The vow of poverty provided the justification for their own hardship and deprivation and also helped them understand the daily trials and needs of many Catholic and non-Catholic working-class immigrants. Although sisters were elevated spiritually in the eyes of their parishioners, their lack of financial security enabled them to empathize with the people they served. Their own poverty helped the csjs avoid a tendency to patronize the needy, a tendency prevalent in many middle- or upper-class, Protestant women's organization^.^^ The sisters' vow of "holy obedence" to their female superior provided a buffer to patriarchal authority, permitting them to resist pressure from male clerics, who utihzed gender and hierarchical privileges to manipulate the sisters. This was an effective method even when the demands were inconsequential or for domestic services. In 1 9 1 I , the parish priest in Georgetown, Colorado, wrote to Reverend Mother Agnes Gonzaga Ryan that the csjs refused to clean his house and that all the parish was "upset7' about this lack of subservience. Ryan wrote back, stating emphatically that "The Rule" (constitution) forbade csjs to provide housekeeping for priests and that he would have to find his own hou~ekeeper.~~ The sisters' religous vow of chastity, of whlch most Protestants and Catholics ahke were aware, afforded the nuns "asexual" status that proved Introduction ( 9

useful when they were interacting in the public domain. Traveling across the country and creating, administering, and worlung in numerous institutions kept csjs in close contact and in frequent interaction with all manner of secular men. Seemingly, the sisters had the best of both worlds: gender afforded them the special courtesy given to most nineteenth-century white women, even as their vow of chastity effectively shielded them from most male sexual advances or unwanted attention. Finally, the religious community was a highly distinctive and inclusive environment that permitted multiple generations to live and work together within woman-only space and tradition. In this communal setting, meals, lodging, celebration, deaths, privileges, and deprivations were shared by all. Some sisters spent fifty or sixty years in a religious community that provided a familial atmosphere in which nuns functioned as mothers, teachers, mentors, friends, confidants, and role models of religious life. Additionally, since many secondary academies and colleges included both boarders and day students, many adolescent girls and young women followed a daily schedule that paralleled or mirrored much of convent life, and thus they interacted daily with sisters in all religious and social activities of the schools. In addtion to the famdial setting, centuries of tradition, sacred symbols, and "sheltered space" have confirmed and enhanced the nun's status in what has been mostly male-defined and -controlled "sacred space." In her two-volume history of women, Gerda Lerner has written extensively about the importance of "free space," sacred symbols, and feminine and divine role models (female saints, mystics, teachers, writers) to women. Catholic nuns have had a long, rich history of religious foremothers and role models who for sixteen centuries have used the convent setting to write, learn, think, and experience the divine through their "womenfocused" lives in one of the few spaces available to them outside of marriage and motherhood-a setting that had the power to teach, nurture, and build a female power base.26This history and tradition added significance and validation to the lives of nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury women who chose to emulate these women and recreate this "sacred space." Although small numbers of non-Catholic sisterhoods existed in the United States, there was no comparable heritage or tradition for women in Prote~tantism.~' If one analyzes the development of a large, active religous community likc the csjs, a multifacctcd story unfolds-a truly Amcrican narrative. It is a story of immigrants and native-born and the intersection of cultures: 10

( Introduction

Anglo, African American, European, Hispanic, and Native American. It is a story of a religious minority and its growth and survival in a sometimes unfriendly Protestant setting. It is a story of a community of women whose massive institution building of schools, hospitals, and social services, combined with their faith and labor-intensive work, helped build and shape Catholic culture and American life. And finally, it is a story of change and adaptation and how centuries of European religous, class, and gender traditions clashed with democratic ideals and eventually realigned within nineteenth- and early-twentieth-centuryAmerican society. This study ends in 1920 even though the history of women religious, including the csjs, continues to the present day. For many historians of women, 1320 was a seminal year. With suffrage and other social, educational, economic, and political changes, American women's lives began to encompass new sets of challenges and opportunities very different from those of their mothers or grandmothers. Besides changes in women's roles, the American Catholic Church also began to "come of age" in modern America. By 1920, the United States, no longer considered a mission territory by the Vatican, came more directly under traditional papal control. American bishops began to consolidate their power, and lay Catholics began to lose some of their immigrant stigma, moving into the American middle class and mainstream society. The I 9 I 7 change in canon law (church law) mandated new restrictions and uniformity for Catholic nuns that, in essence, limited community autonomy and insured more hierarchical control and management. This occurred even as American religious communities began to grow in unprecedented numbers. The years after I 920, including pre - and post-Vatican I1 changes for American sisters, begn another story that deserves analysis in its own right.

Introduction

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emerged is helpful for understanding this community and others like it that pioneered new roles for women in society and the church and provided the foundation for the American CSJS almost two centuries later. When first established, the new service-oriented religous congregations were suspect in the eyes of both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Unlike officially sanctioned female monasticism with enclosure, solemn vows, and daily chanting of the Divine Office, the new communities engaged in work outside their convents, took simple vows, and were in constant contact with lay people.' The Council of Trent had forbidden nuns to mix with the world, and respectable society saw an uncloistered religious lifestyle as improper and undignified. Members of the new women's communities were labeled "Jesuitesses~'and "galloping girls" and criticized for trying to do men's work.4 French parlements condemned women religious "seen in the streets of the town and faubourg though forbidden to be out" and ordered that they be returned to their convents immediately "under good and secure guard" at the convent's e ~ p e n s e . ~ Actually, uncloistered women religious had been numerous in earlier European society. Even after official papal prohibition, many medieval women continued to live like religious, though not in traditional monasteries. Such groups as tertiaries, beguines, and Sisters of the Common Life lived in communal houses or with their families, devoting themselves to prayer and helping others. Some were mystics, like Catherine of Siena; others, like the Grey Sisters, nursed the sick in hospitals or in their h ~ r n e s . ~ They continued this unorthodox lifestyle as long as rules on enclosure were not consistently enforced, but the Reformation's focus on abuses in the church prompted religous authorities to take a harder line on violations of canon law. Like earlier Catholic reformers, church leaders emphasized stricter control of females, and papal decrees after Trent signaled a renewed and serious intent to suppress all organizations of activist women.7 In seelung to restrict female endeavors, the Catholic Church followed long-established doctrine and practice. From earliest times Christian theology had taught the inferiority of women. St. Paul said: "Wives be subject to your husbands as to the Lord" and "I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep ~ilent."~ Aquinas argued that "woman is by nature subject to man, because the power of rational discernment is by nature stronger in man."' Canon law, like many civil law codes, entitled men to beat their wives. In the post-Reformation church the drive to enforce clerical celibacy produced a more intense hostility 14

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The French Connection

toward the "guilty" sex. Attempting to eliminate priests' wives and concubines, preachers and confessors frequently described women as threats to male virtue and instruments of the devil.I0 Prevailing social trends also limited women's roles in early modern Europe. The economy's emphasis on large-scale production gave females fewer opportunities as independent artisans and entrepreneurs, and increasing political centralization encouraged greater legal subjugation of wives to husbands. New laws gave male heads of families more control of property, curtailing the ability of married women to control their wealth. They could be punished and imprisoned at their husband's wish. Both civil and religous authorities became more hostile toward unmarried women." Symptomatic of the mentality of the times was the persecution of witches, whlch reached its height between I 600 and I 6 j o. Although estimates have varied, recent figures indicate that more than I oo,ooo people were prosecuted throughout Europe on charges of witchcraft-80 percent of them women. The Papacy legitimized the persecution in Catholic areas by defining witchcraft as a heresy to be eradicated.I2 In view of prevailing opinion and custom, the mass movement of Catholic women into active religious communities at this particular time was profoundly countercultural. The impetus for what Elizabeth Rapley called a "fantastic conventual invasion" came from the wars, natural disasters, and grim socioeconomic conditions of the time and the intense spiritual fervor generated within Catholicism by the Catholic Reformation. Initiative, however, came from the women themselves. Far from being "called forth" by the church, they struggled to win acceptance, often against great odds, from ecclesiastical leaders. Eventually they met less opposition as the value of their services was recognized. Their existence was still contrary to papal decrees, but in France, religous and civil officials who supported them had precedents for ignoring unwelcome mandates from Rome. The patronage of influential elites also helped them survive.13

Ravaged by bloody civil and foreign wars, devastating plagues, famines, and epidemics, and torn by religious fanaticism and peasant unrest, France in the seventeenth century was a nation of extreme contrasts. The magnificence of classical literature and baroque architecture, the grandeur of Versailles, and the wealth of great aristocrats led earlier historians to The French Connection

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write of the "splendid" century. More recently the research of economic and social historians has suggested that this was a tragic century during which most of the population suffered grinding poverty, misery, and often untimely death. Like other European states of the time, France was predominantly an agrarian society where approximately 90 percent of its eighteen to twenty million people lived in small towns and villages or were dispersed throughout the rural countryside. By the early 1600s the tradtional agricultural economy was becoming increasingly inadequate to support the population as concentration of land in the hands of privileged elites expanded. Since most peasants, wage earners, and day laborers made a precarious living in the best of times, they were extremely vulnerable to adverse developments whether of natural or human origin. Unfortunately, early modern France had no shortage of adversity. In the late sixteenth century, Europe had entered into a "little ice age" when average temperatures fell, shortening the growing season, reducing harvests, and causing famines. Malnutrition and starvation brought heavy mortality and a deeper and more widespread poverty. France had four deadly famines between I 630 and 1694 and several others almost as severe. The people also endured almost continuous warfare-international wars, civil wars, and a number of peasant and lower-class uprisings. These brought widespread devastation and destitution and inflicted the dreaded passage and/or billeting of soldiers upon peasants and townspeople. Perio d outbreaks ~ of the plague increased the general misery.14 Contemporary observers painted a grim picture of appalhng conditions. A physician in Blois wrote in I 662:

I have been practicing medicine in t h s part of the country for thirtytwo years. I have never seen such desolation, not only in Blois[,] where there are about four thousand poor, including migrants from neighboring parishes in addition to the local indigent, but in the whole country. The famine is so great that peasants have no bread and consume decaying carcasses. As soon as a horse or any other animal dies they eat it. . . . Malignant fevers are beginning to spread, and with the heat, and so much humidlty and rot, all these miserable people who are already weak will &e very qkckly. If God does not gve us extraordmary assistance we can expect an enormous death toll.15 Children were particularly at risk under such circumstances. Some of those placed in the Coucbe of Paris, a home for the orphaned or abandoned, "were sold at eight sols apiece to beggars who broke their arms and legs so I6

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that people would be inclined to gve them alms, and then let them die of h~nger."'~ These tragedies coincided with the vast outpouring of religous energy produced in France by the Catholic Reformation. In part a reaction against Protestantism, the spiritual renewal within Catholicism found official expression in the Council of Trent, which met in several sessions between I 5 4 5 and I 5 6 3. Insisting, in opposition to Luther, that salvation requires the performance of good works in addition to divine grace, the council set the tone for Catholic post-Reformation spirituality. It was to be active and apostolic, directed outward toward the world and the salvation of souls. The individual search for holiness, including prayer and meditation, was to be combined with service of God in society.17 In France, the Catholic Reformation began with the close of the Wars of Religion at the end of the sixteenth century. By that time, decades of military combat between Catholics and Protestants and the partial toleration granted to Protestants in the Edict of Nantes had created religous zeal of exceptional intensity, in some cases fanaticism, among many adherents of both faiths. By recognizing two hosule churches in a society where Catholicism had been entrenched for centuries, the French government set the stage for an impassioned contest for souls. Besides trying to transform ignorant and nonobservant Christians into informed and devout believers, Catholic reformers struggled to win back Protestants to the "true faith." The large scale of the institutional church, its network of parishes and personnel throughout the country, and its intimate connections with the upper levels of French society made its influence powerful and pervasive.18As religious zeal became fashionable among French elites, prominent aristocrats and royal officials joined religious leaders in a crusade to implement the reforms of Trent and address the social problems of the age.l9 Seeing monasticism as essential for the vitality of the church, they placed the reform of existing monasteries and creation of new ones among their first prioritie~.~~ The interest of early French reformers in monasticism, especially for women, was partly inspired by the printing press. In the late sixteenth century many important religous works were published in the vernacular and disseminated in France, including those of Teresa of Avila. Her humility, humor, and forthright common sense captivated her readers, mostly upper-class French women, who adopted the "devout7' life and became active reformers. One of them, Madame Acarie, made her home a center for frequent meetings of the French divots, including government officials, The French Connection ( 17

leaders of the clergy, and prominent aristocrat^.^' Madame Acarie sponsored a foundation of Carmelites in Paris in I 6oj and later entered the order herself. Carmelite foundations increased to fifty-six in the next forty years, and Teresian spirituality came to permeate the community of French de'vots, promoting the revitalization of existing groups of cloistered nuns and the creation of many new congregations of religious women.

Active Commztnities of Women Among forerunners of the csjs in France as active women religious were the Ursulines, Visitandines, and Daughters of Charity. In I 607 Madame de Sainte-Beuve, a Parisian de'vote, founded an Ursuline convent in Paris.22The order had been introduced into France some years before in Avignon, and by 1630 over eighty houses of French Ursulines had been established, some by bishops but many by groups of local women who set up their own individual convents and later were officially absorbed into the Ursuline order.23In I 61o the Visitation order was founded by Jane Frances de Chantal and Francis de Sales. De Chantal, a noblewoman and widowed mother of four children, had taken a vow of chastity after her husband's death and devoted herself to charity, nursing the sick, and assisting the poor in her neighborhood. Seeking a more complete religious life, she placed herself under de Sales for spiritual direction. The community they founded was designed for women like herself who desired a life of prayer and meditation but whose health, age, or family circumstances disqualified them for the austerities of traditional monasticism. While emphasizing prayer and contemplation, the sisters also undertook charitable work among the sick and poor because the founders thought a life combining prayer and good works was most pleasing to God. The order soon became extremely popular and had seventy-two foundations when de Chantal died in 1641.24 The experience of the Ursuline and Visitation nuns illustrates the formidable obstacles faced by the first generation of active women religious. In spite of their intention to be active "in the world:' both eventually had to accept solemn vows and cloister. In the case of the Visitation, Francis de Sales acceded to the objections of a fellow bishop who argued that exceptions to the rule of cloister would cause "scandal" and permit nuns without solemn vows to leave their convents and legally claim succession rights to family properties if they so desired. Upper-class families, from whom most candidates for the convent came at this time, saw this possiI8

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bility as highly objectionable. De Sales accepted defeat when he saw that both secular and ecclesiastical elites were prepared to oppose him. For the Ursulines the decision to adopt cloister occurred gradually as one convent after another yielded to pressure from the hierarchy, local notables, or from some of the nuns themselves. Both Ursdnes and Visitandines, however, deviated from traditional monastic discipline by continuing to educate girls and young women within their convents. They expanded the options for women religous by becoming "active contemplative^."^^ Many pious women unable or unwilling to follow their peers into convents found an alternative in personal prayer and charity, motivated by the suffering they saw around them: "What misery we saw before our eyes and what importunings assaulted our ears from the innumerable poor vagabonds who filled the streets and churches, never giving our spirits repose; our sacrifices brought no silence nor our prayers r e ~ p o n s e l ' ~ ~ e s i visdes iting hospitals, prisons, and the homes of the sick, they gave religious instruction and alms to the poor in Paris and in rural areas. Their efforts in the countryside were inspircd and guided by Vincent de Paul, one of the most effective friends of the poor in the history of the Catholic Church. Of peasant origin, de Paul rose rapidly to a position of influence in both religious and secular society. A friend of most of the devout reformers of Paris, he also had close connections to the powerful at court, and for a time he belonged to one of the royal councils. He began working in a small rural parish near Lyons in the 1620sand created a confraternity (lay organization) of well-to-do women to provide food, medicine, and spiritual counsel for those in need. Similar confraternities soon appeared in many other villages, most often under the patronage of the lord or lady of the locale, usually a Parisian Local women volunteers, assisted by some from Paris, did the actual work. One of de Paul's helpers, Louise de Marillac, was the cofounder with him of the Daughters of Charity, a major prototype of the csjs. The Daughters of Charity, the largest and best known of the early postReformation women's communities to survive without cloister and solemn vows, evolved from a confraternity established to aid the poor in Paris. The organization soon had problems because upper-class Parisian ladies, often reluctant to perform personally the menial services required, sent servants, who sometimes neglected or abused the poor whom they were supposed to help. Some young peasant women whom de Paul had met on one of his rural missions offered to do the work that was repugnant to the Parisian dhotes, and Louise de Marillac took them into her home to provide The French Connection

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some preliminary training for their work in the city. At first simply secular women, free to go and come as they wished, they soon began to adopt the customs and lifestyle of religous. To prevent an outcry from ecclesiastical authorities, de Paul forbade them to take public vows and required them to continue to wear secular dress and to call themselves a confraternity rather than a congregation. He advised that if a bishop should inquire whether they were religious they were to "tell him no, by the grace of God. . . . Tell him that you are poor Daughters of Charity, and that you are gven to God for the service of the poor."28The strategy was successful. Although a few difficulties occurred and the sisters were occasionally harassed in public, the need for their services made them generally welcome. In less than thirty years the small group of vdlage girls worhng in Paris confraternities had grown to over 800 women spread throughout the country.29 Although the Daughters of Charity were among the first postReformation women's communities working in the lay world, a number of similar groups preceded and followed them. According to scholar Judith Taylor, six active French congregations were founded in the 1620s, and nine more, in addition to the Daughters, between 1630 and 1640.~'USUally small, sometimes consisting of only two or three women, they were most often created to staff and/or administer a charitable institutionorphanage, hospital, refuge, workshop, or school. Foundations were frequently established by a local person of means who gave the women a r&dement (religious rule or constitution) to foster appropriate behavior and spirituality." The most disastrous period in seventeenth-century France came at rnidcentury, when poor harvests combined with civil war caused mass migrations of desperate peasants to the cities and threatened a breakdown of public order.32These years also saw the most rapid growth of new active congregations of women religious. Judith Taylor lists seventy created in France between 16 5 0 and 1720, which together maintained more than 1,100 separate foundations by 1789. One of them was the Sisters of St. Joseph, founded, according to long-standing tradition, at Le Puy around I 6 5 0.33Surviving documents gve considerable information about the early Sisters of St. Joseph, but tantalizing gaps in the record remain.34

CJy Origins and Activities befoore the Revolntion In 1644 Henry de Maupas, bishop of Le Puy, authorized a group of religous women "to raise and instruct the poor girls of Le Puy, with neither 20

( The French Connection

mother nor father, who have been sent to Montferrand [a hospital in the city]l' By 1648 the hospital had a chapel and was known as "the St. Joseph home for orphan girls on Montferrand street in Le Puy." In 16jI the bishop approved the presence of a congregation of women at the Montferrand hospital, "under the name and title of the Filhes de Sainct-Joseph," and later that year six Daughters of St. Joseph formed a legal contract of association. The name of one of them, Fransoise Eyraud, had appeared in hospital documents in 1647, indicating a connection between the Daughters of St. Joseph and the first group of religious women at Montferrand. Because of its formal approbation by the bishop, the Le Puy foundation has customarily been considered the official beginning of the ~ongregation.~~ Surviving records indcate a relationship between the Montferrand csjs and Jean-Pierre Mkdaille, a Jesuit priest active in Le Puy and neighboring dioceses. Sources show that Mkdaille helped create six early communities of St. Joseph, at Dunieres, Marlhes, Saint Romain-Lachalm, Arlanc, Sauxillanges, and an unidentified location. The documents establishtng the existence of the unnamed community are two letters written by the Jesuit father general in March of I 647 criticizing Mkdaille for having "prescribed rules for a grouping of women without the approval of the Provincial." By the time of Mkdaille's death in I 669, thtrty-four communities of St.Joseph had been founded, a good number probably with his a~sistance.~~ Like his contemporary Vincent de Paul, Jean-Pierre Mtdaille worked as a missionary in the rural areas of seventeenth-century France. Assigned to various Jesuit colleges in the Massif Central, he combined administrative responsibhties with apostolic activity3' Correspondence in the archives of the Society of Jesus in Rome indicates that Mtdaille's involvement with the sisters was not welcomed by his superiors. The Jesuit father general, Francis Piccolomini, wrote in I 6 5 I : "They say at Le Puy that Father Pierre Mkdaille is launching an extraordinary undertaktng, for the institution of I know not what sort of a group of women. I want to know the nature of his plan and from whom he obtained permission to busy himself with such matters which are hardly in accordance with our institute." Mkdaille was aware of these suspicions because his superiors warned htm about the irregularity of his work with the sisters. No doubt he also knew that the Jesuit rule did not allow its members to be spiritual directors or regular confessors of religious women.'* However, he maintained contact with the Sisters of St. Joseph, helping in the establishment of at least two communities in the I 66os, the last in I 66 j , four years before his death. In these The French Connection (

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endeavors he was unusual among his fellow Jesuits, most of whom seem to have shared contemporary gender biases. In rejecting these biases and ignoring the dsapproval of his superiors, Mtdaille not only challenged prevailing opinion but risked his own reputation and official standing in the Jesuit community. After his death, the Jesuit necrology described him as a man of zeal and holiness, respected by the people and especially by the bishops under whom he served. N o mention was made of his work with the csjs, perhaps because his colleagues saw it as insipficant, or possibly from a desire not to speak ill of the dead." In official hstories of female religious communities the role of males as "founders" has often attracted far more attention than the contributions of the women themselves. Recent research on the origins of women's congregations has shown, however, that women were often the actual architects of the new socially active female congregation^.^^ Archtval records of two early csj foundations mention female initiative, identifying Anne Deschaux at Dunieres and Catherine Frappa at Marlhes as Mkdaille's collaborators. At Le Puy records show Franqoise Eyraud functioning as administrator in 1647, suggesting that she had probably already been there for some time, possibly as leader of the group of "religious women" introduced by Bishop de Maupas in 1644.~'Clearly the religious energy of the women who offered to work for the service of God and neighbor was the creative force that made the community of the Sisters of St. Joseph possible. Marguerite de Saint-Laurans, described by a contemporary as a saint and a cofounder with Father Mtdaille of the csj convent in Le Puy, also had a key role in its early history. A merchant of Le Puy and benefactor of the sisters recorded most of what is known about her in a memoir written after 1664. Marguerite came from the diocese of Saint-Flour, where Mtdaille was stationed between 1642 and 1650, and she may have known him there. He became her spiritual director, and she followed him in his missions. In 1648 she came to the hospital at Montferrand to assist Franqoise Eyraud, who, being illiterate, had asked the administrators for someone to help educate the girls and keep financial records. Several sources suggest that Marguerite functioned as novice mistress for a time. However, she did not remain permanently with the csjs, did not sign the contract of association with the other six sisters in I 6 j I , and left Le Puy after r 6 j 4 to become a hermit. Her biographer wrote that she had problems with the bishop of Saint-Flour, who "persecuted her strangely," and that she lived in a cave on bread and water, slept on straw, and "wrote 22

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incessantly . . . on the duty of ecclesiastics." Educated, charismatic, and devout, Marguerite probably helped to shape the spirituality of the early CSJ community through her interactions with Mtdadle and the sisters. The mystical emphasis on inner union with God found in early csj documents may reflect her influence as well as Mkdaille's, since she was clearly attracted to contemplation and later pursued it in her Although the extent of Marguerite's spiritual influence on the csjs is speculative,Jean-Pierre Mtdadle left written evidence of his contributions in four documents that served to unify and stabihze the early community.43 His writings reveal a gfted spiritual director, sensitive to the aspirations and capabilities of the women he counseled and aware of contemporary social realities. He also had multiple inspirations and models in seventeenth-century French spirituality from whch to choose in devising constitutions for a religious community.44Influenced by devout women seehng to serve God in the world, and conscious of desperate social and religious needs, Mtdaille formulated a rule for the early sisters that combined intense spirituality with practical responsiveness to contemporary demands. Fundamentally the directives proposed for the csjs were based on the Gospels, specifically the two great commandments, love of God and love of neighbor.45Early csj documents stress these repeatedly: "They should so live that their Congregation may bear the name of the Congregation of the great love of God. . . . They will also show great charity towards all classes of neighbors, particularly toward the poor. . . . Let all dread the slightest disunion as they would a monster. They should be formed with extraordinary care in this spirit of love and charity."46 Also fundamental was an emphasis on active effort to assist in Christ's redemptive work for the salvation of souls. "Their very little institute has been founded to bring many souls to a great and true love of God. . . . [T]o achieve this purpose more fully, they will undertake all the spiritual and corporal works of mercy of which women are ~apable."~' The documents encouraged the sisters to imitate Christ's virtues, especially h u d t y , mentioning it more than twenty-five times in the collection of one hundred recommended rules of behavior, titled Maxims ofthe LittIe Institute. They also advocated selfless striving "toward the greater glory of God,'' the motto of the Jesuits.48 Understandably, Medade's suggestions for the sisters reflect his Jesuit training, but elements from other sources are present also. Like Francis de Sales, he frequently recommended gentleness, moderation, peace, and trust.4gAt times his advice used gendered language that recalled the writThe French Connection

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ings of medeval mystics like Julian of Nonvich and anticipated insights of some post-Vatican I1 theologians, as in a passage from The Eucharistic Letter: "In imitation of this dear Savior, let us obey as a child, without questioning, without worrying about anything except allowing Divine Providence to gmde us as a gentle mother who truly knows our needs and who by her very nature rears children lovingly nestled at her breast."50Foundational texts of the csjs indicate that the desire to acheve holiness for both members and "the dear neighbor" was the primary impetus for the congregation, and that charitable works were the preferred means to achieve this goal. While usually compatible with the teachings of Trent, the documents also depart from them in sipficant ways, especially in proposing an active role for women religious and attributing feminine qualities to God. Although their constitutions plainly said that they intended to live "in the manner of religious" and without cloister, the Sisters of St. Joseph did not encounter the same degree of opposition met by earlier active female congregations. By the time of their foundation at midcentury, similar communities already existed and were multiplying rapidly, mainly because of the immense social needs they were addressing. Acceptance came more readily because their members, u d k e upper-class women, could work for a living without censure and were unlikely to be potential claimants to a family inheritance-the issue that had caused trouble for early Visitation and Ursuline nuns. Also, although of humble background themselves, the sisters often had influential sponsors who helped them obtain official recoption and sometimes financial support. According to Judith Taylor, "The secular congregation might have withered in France as quickly and quietly as it already had in late Renaissance Italy. That it did not is attributable to the divots, their influence and rank, their cohesion and persistence. . . . [Clonfirmation [was] secured as often as not by an old family friend of a founder or by an influential Lady of Charity in a position to exchange favors. . . . By I 6 j o the female secular congregation had been irrevocably established in Fran~e."~' The early Sisters of St. Joseph fit the social profile that enabled many similar congregations to survive in France at midcentury. Four of the seven original sisters at Le Puy were from middle-class famhes, two of more humble origins, while Marguerite de Saint-Laurans probably had connections with the nobility. All were from small towns, and of the six who made the contract of association in 1 6 j I , only one could sign her name. Only two brought dowries.52Like many of the other new active communities, the csjs needed the influential supporters, male and female, 24

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who helped them survive, most importantly Henry de Maupas du Tour, the bishop of Le Puy and count of Velay. An aristocrat whose father had been a counselor of King Henry IV, de Maupas had wealth and patronage as well as religious authority to enhance his power. He was a disciple and friend of Vincent de Paul, an admirer and biographer of Francis de Sales, and a close associate of many leaders of the dhot group in Paris. His support and formal approbation of the csj foundation were vital for its continuance and success.53Another early benefactor of the sisters was LucrZce de la Planche, an aristocratic and "very virtuous woman" who made them welcome in her home for several months after their arrival in Le Puy. "She not only &d everything in her power for the establishment of these sisters, but continued until her death to work with extraordinary zeal and charity for the advancement of their ~ongregation."~~ The first csjs did experience hostility from local secular authorities, a type of opposition commonly encountered by religous of the period and one that could have put an end to their efforts in Le Puy. The rapid proliferation of convents at this time was m a l n g French municipal authorities increasingly nervous about the loss of precious urban space to women religious. The fear was that, as women, they might incur financial losses and become a public charge. In I 63 I irate citizens of Troyes had "dragged a coachload of Visitandine nuns backwards away from the city gates."55 The csjs' experience was less dramatic, but in 16 j4 when, after a worried discussion of the numerous convents in the city, Le Puy officials learned that a new foundation had been made without municipal approval, they sent six members of the city assembly to expel the sisters from the town. According to one eyewitness, when the angry male delegation reached the Montferrand hospital they encountered Fransoise Eyraud and Marguerite de Saint-Laurans,who brought them into a room where the sisters made ribbon. Soon their hostility vanished and the meeting became a "courteous and very civil visit." Understanding the gender politics of the situation, Fransoise and Marguerite had seen the need to justify their existence as women independent of male supervision. They knew the ribbon room would reassure their visitors that the sisters could not only earn money to support themselves but also teach the orphan grls a trade that might be of future benefit to the The community of the Sisters of St. Joseph grew rapidly. In just ten years there were twenty houses in three dioceses and by 1790 approximately I 13 foundations in fourteen dioceses.57Such expansion indicates that the congregation meshed well with the social and religious needs of The French Connection (

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its environment. Open to women of all classes, it did not limit its mission to any particular type of activity and did not require a large dowry, lengthy preparation for entrance, or education.58Each community was autonomous and needed only the approval of the local bishop or his representative to exist and begn its work. Acting within accepted gender parameters, the sisters were willing to work for minimal salaries, sometimes for nothing, and adapt to a variety of institutional settings, types of housing, and educational and relief activities. Besides caring for orphans as they did in Le Puy, they administered and staffed hospitals, boarding schools, homes for fallen women, schools for "converted" Protestants, workshops for making lace and ribbon, and dispensaries of medications for the sick. They also taught poor children and assumed total responsibihty for charitable relief in many rural parishes.59 In Le Puy, the csjs became responsible for the care of about forty orphans and soon assumed additional duties.'jOEmpowered by their constitution to undertake all the works of charity "of which women are capable," they opened a free school for poor children and a boarding school for girls of higher social status, which provided a regular income to help subsidize their nonpaying activities. Fran~oiseEyraud's competent management during her thirty years as superior secured additional income with the acquisition of eight houses and two gardens in the Montferrand area. Approximately IOO years later, when required to disclose their financial status to the revolutionary government, the Le Puy community declared investments valued at 7 3,000 livres, which yielded an annual income of 4,000 to j ,000 livres. Thls was enough to maintain sixteen sisters, two lay sisters, and twelve destitute orphans funded by benefactors, to educate virtually free of charge sixty poor grls, and to help local famihes who were unable to support their children. In comparison with other religious communities in Le Puy at the time, the csjs were among the less affluent, with annual expenses far greater than their income from operation^.^^ Testimony from the head of the city council of Le Puy indicates that their efforts were appreciated: One of the most useful establishments for this city [is] that of the Sisters of the Congregation of St. Joseph, who live with great edification, and who, not satisfied to retire within their own house, and to raise the poor orphan girls according to the object of their foundation, take in many other children besides, whose poverty-stricken parents are not able to provide them a livelihood, still less an education; that moreover 26

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they instruct and raise the boarders whom they have with a care and regard which is rarely seen elsewhere.62 The Le Puy community became a model for other csj communities,whlch sometimes sent novices there for initial formation (training). Hospitals staffed by the csjs included both general and traditional hospitals and hitetels-Dieu. At Mende they directed a general hospital, one of those originally intended to discipline vagrants and able-bodied beggars by forcing them to work. Over time the policy of confinement was gradually abandoned because of its obvious failure, and general hospitals came to be homes for the "deserving poorm-the aged, disabled, and children. The size and staffing of sisters' institutions varied widely. By 1790 the Mende hospital had I 5 2 residents, including 9 5 old and infirm, 29 children, 4 sisters of St. Joseph, and a number of employees involved in running the house. The csjs in Mende were more fortunate than four sister-nurses at a hospital in Rodez who cared for 472 poor, of whom almost half were totally incapacitated, many bedridden. The sisters had to enlist a number of the able-bodied but frail and elderly residents to help in tendmg the sick and the orphaned children.63 An important csj hospital foundation was made in 1668 when Sister Jeanne Burdier, one of the six foundresses of the Le Puy community, and two companions took charge of the bite/-Dieu in Vienne. The support of the archbishop and Burdier's leadership as superior led to a remarkable expansion of the csj presence in Vienne and neighboring areas. The first new mission was at Gap in the French Alps, where Burdier witnessed the misery of the poor in the small local hospital and offered to send three sisters to help. The bishop and town consuls responded positively, even after Burdier told them that renovations were needed before the sisters would come, "to give it [the hospital] a form other than it has at present in order to avoid the mixture of those who are healthy with the sick, and to separate the men from the women, in order to prevent many evil consequences."" Some years later the sisters at Gap faced a severe test of their dedication to health care. In I 691, when the armies of Louis XIV passed through the town en route from Italy, an epidemic among the troops left their tiny hospital swamped with patients, and all the hospital nuns &ed as a result of caring for them. Mother Burdier later sent other sisters to replace them. Superior at Vienne unul her death in 1700, Burdier began some ten new CSJ foundations in hospitals or houses of refuge in neighboring areas. The French Connection

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Their sisters remained in touch with the Vienne community and depended on it in various ways. Novices came to Vienne for training and then were sent to serve in other missions, sometimes to be transferred later as the need arose. Mutual assistance between communities included everything from financial aid and religous habits to spiritual books. Vienne began to function like a motherhouse, and under Burdier as superior it exerted a powerful influence over its "daughter7' houses, always with the approval of the respective bishops. The rapid expansion of the community presented some logistical problems, however, because transmission of the csj constitutions in handwritten copies to new houses led to numerous textual variations and discrepancies. Mother Burdier took the lead in convohng a group of sisters to compare different versions of the constitutions, formulate an acceptable text, and obtain permission from the archbishop to have an official copy printed in Vienne. The bishop gave his approval in November of 1693, and the first printed version of the csj constitutions appeared in I 694. Burdier was a practical, compassionate, and determined superior. She monitored the well-being of the sisters and the sick, making sure that sister-nurses were not overwhelmed with work and patients were well cared for, and used the sisters' religious identity to create space for them in the secular world. In dealings with lay administrators, she maintained a clear distinction between the sisters' accountability to them for hospital management and their religious obedience to the archbishop, not hesitating to remind officials on occasion that the csjs, as women religious, obeyed the bishop, rather than laymen, in spiritual matters. When important requests were not honored by the hospital board she found other options. For example, after several fruitless attempts to obtain a separate area in the hospital where the sisters could pray and meditate without distraction, she finally purchased a house to serve as their convent as well as a refuge for penitent women. She modeled effective leadershp and dedication for many young sisters who made their novitiate at Vienne before leaving to work elsewhere in the region. Unfortunately, Burdier's legacy was considerably weakened after class pressures made themselves felt w i t h the Vienne community. The influence of a wealthy aristocratic benefactor had caused a number of young upper-class women to be admitted as novices to the convent, and in time the tenor of the community began to change. Administrators began to complain that the sisters relegated hospital tasks to domestic help instead of caring for patients themselves, gave patients food inferior to their own, 28

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turned revenues of the h6te.l-Diezlto their own profit, and lived like ladies of "a certain social condtion." Whether the assertions were all true cannot be determined, but it is clear that the sisters at this time began to take on more of the upper-class characteristics of cloistered religous. After a long conflict and several failed attempts at reconciliation, the administrators dismissed the sisters from the h6tel-Diezt in 17j j . In I 777, with the permission of the archbishop's vicar general, the csjs at Vienne became officially cl~istered.~~ A dfferent but in some ways similar story unfolded at the h6te.l-Dieu in Sauxillanges, where the csjs were also eventually dismissed. Although the sisters had accepted a contract to care for the sick poor of the town, they admitted only orphans to the hospital and visited the sick in their homes. Eventually, and not without difficulty, the well-to-do merchant who had established the hospital succeeded in having patients admitted to it. However, when he demanded that a man suffering from a "repugnant disease" be admitted, the sisters "with violence extraordinary to their sex and scandalous for their profession" punched the elderly gentleman in the nose and pushed h m into the street, "practically knocking him to the ground." They said "they would rather die than have this lllness in their house." Both sides sued in court, and the sisters refused to accept a court-ordered compromise. Finally, after the superior had died, the citizens of Sauxillanges forced the two remaining sisters to leave the town. They did so, leaving behind their home and most of their meager posse~sions.~~ As both incidents demonstrate, religious ideals &d not always prevail over more self-serving considerations among the early csjs. Although of modest social status, the sisters at Sauxillanges showed no greater zeal for the humble tasks involved in serving the poor than some of the "ladies of condition" in Vienne. A major dfference in the two cases is that the community in Vienne survived, thanks to the patronage of powerful protectors. When the Vienne nuns left the h6tel-Dieu, they joined another csj community in the city that managed the Providence, a refuge for penitent women located in a building donated by the archbishop of Vienne. The sisters at the Providence had earlier received letters patent from King Louis XV that freed them from oversight by the hospital administrators and placed them under the archbishop's jurisdi~tion.~' Their land, house, oratory, and garden were declared inalienable as things of God used in the service of the poor. Such guarantees, obtained through the intervention of Archbishop Henry Oswald de la Tour d7Auvergne,a cousin of the kmg, had not been granted to the less well connected community at SauxllThe French Connection

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langes. Social class played a part in events in Vienne and Sauxdlanges as dtd the powerful influence of what has been called the "monastic tempt a t i ~ n . ,In '~~ contrast to the women with solemn vows and cloister who enjoyed status as "true" religious with special privileges and exemptions, those with simple vows were seen as lesser beings with no claim to society's special consideration or respect. Throughout this period the cloister continued to elicit a strong fascination, representing the more perfect life choice, the "true" religious vocation, for all women and especially for the upper classes. The tirst constitution of the Sisters of St. Joseph indicated that the sisters would engage in "hospital work, the direction of orphanages [and] the visitation of the sick poor" and mentioned somewhat tentatively that they might undertake "even the instruction of girls in places where the religious communities already established are not doing The ktnd of teaching originally intended was religious instruction and training in practical skills, but the csjs soon responded to growing demands for a broader feminine education. Early in the seventeenth century the Catholic Church had been adamantly opposed to women teaching, later reluctantly allowing it only w i t h the cloister. A highly placed Vatican official spoke for many when he said, "It matters little what the times demand . . . all [female] congregations that refuse the enclosure must be suppre~sed."~~ However, by midcentury the realization had dawned that while the Council of Trent had mandated cloister for nuns, it had also stressed the duty to instruct the faithful, and since knowledge of the faith was believed essential for salvation, religious instruction should have priority over other considerations. The key that finally opened school doors to the female congregations was the growing awareness of the importance of education for grls. Little grls were potential future mothers and future teachers of their children, capable of sharing the faith in which they had been instructed. However, if they were to be instructed, women must teach them, because both religous and secular authorities objected to coeducation and to male instructors for female student^.^' From the start, the first Sisters of St. Joseph to come to Le Puy taught a variety of subjects and students: religous education for young girls and women, ribbon making and probably other practical skills for the orphans, and a broader curriculum of study in the boarding school for girls from middle- and upper-class families. As the csjs expanded into small rural villages and began work in hospitals or refuges in larger towns and cities, almost all communities were involved in some kind of teaching.72At 30

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Vienne, in addition to the hospital, the sisters ran a house of refuge and a day school; at Clermont and Avignon they offered free classes for poor girls; at Aubenas they taught young girls of the town readmg, writing, and religion; and at Tence, Satillieu, Cheylard, and Gap they taught young "converts" from Protestantism and educated other girls and women in religion, reading, writing, and other subjects.73Many of the hospitals they served were small parish institutions of twenty to thirty beds that in addtion to caring for the sick offered basic instruction for poor girls. Although surviving documents do not describe curricula offered in their schools, it is reasonable to assume that the Sisters of St. Joseph provided instruction comparable to that given by other religous communities in French schools of the period. The largest number of csj students were at the elementary level in both urban and rural areas, and the typical curriculum of such Frenchpetites e'coles consisted mainly of religion, with a strong emphasis on morality, the three R's, and needlework. Religious instruction focused on learning prayers, studying the catechism, preparation for confirmation and first communion, and behavior training in "Christian duties, hatred of sin, love of virtue, and civilite'and good manner~."'~ Of the other subjects taught, reading was the most important since it gave children access to the word of God, and all elementary schools claimed to teach it. Although writing was usually considered part of the curriculum, it was less likely to be taught to all students. One reason was lack. of preparation on the part of some teachers; another was that writing was not taught until after reading had been mastered, and some pupils did not progress that far. Writing also required additional tools and facditiesknife, paper, inkwell, powder, and tables in addition to the standard school benches. Sometimes writing students had to pay an extra fee. Arithmetic did not receive much emphasis, its minor importance indicated by the hour per week usually allotted to it. Reflecting the gendered nature of the curriculum, handwork came next in importance after religion and reading. It was considered essential for all girls, rich and poor, "to avoid the evils of idleness." In elite schools girls learned tapestry, embroidery, French and English sewing, and other "accomplishments" valued by the upper class, whde in the many free schools and workshops they learned ribbon and lace mahng, stocking knitting, and other practical skills that would help them earn a respectable living. The number of free charity day schools expanded rapidly with the postReformation Catholic missionary effort, and classes were typically large, ranging from 40 to IOO pupils. Some schools financed themselves in part The French Connection

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with proceeds from the sale of students' handwork. In rural areas girls had more difficulty attending school, since villages often hired schoolmasters to teach boys but seldom provided schoolmistresses for the grls. Nearly all rural girls' schools were conducted by religious communities, and the disparities among peasant girls' educational opportunities in different regions reflected the presence or absence of the sisters: "The Vatelotes, for example . . . staffed I 24 schools in Lorraine in 1789. . . . The Filles de la Sagesse . . . operated 66 schools in lower Normandy and Saintonge. . . . The Auvergne and Velay regions were served by the Btates, the Demoiselles de YInstruction, and the Soeurs de Saint-Jo~eph."'~Social class affected both curriculum and tuition in educational institutions. Boarding schools for upper-class grls not only gave instruction in the basics-catechism, reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, and handwork-but usually added other options such as history, geography, music, drawing, and dancing. The most elite and expensive Parisian boarding schools charged tuition of 400 to joo livres per year and employed private tutors to give special lessons. Tuition at Ursuline schools was somewhat less, ranging from 240 livres in Paris to I oo in small towns. At their boarding school in Clermont the csjs charged tuition of about 2 0 0 livres, suggesting that they must have offered an education comparable to that provided by the other religious congregations in the city-Ursulines, Bernardines, and Benedictine~.'~ In post-Reformation Europe, the preoccupation of religious and secular authorities with control of women was demonstrated not only through emphasis on male authority in the family and cloister for religious women but also in the creation of "refuges" for sexually vulnerable and wayward women. Prostitution, legal in medieval times, was gradually crirninahzed in most European cities at this time, and even before municipal bordellos were closed, officials tried to control women who worked outside the authorized houses. In France in I 644 the city council of Nimes decided to imprison all native prostitutes in a tower, where they would be fed bread and water, and drive the "foreign" offenders out after shaving their heads. Beginning in 1684 national laws established severe penalties for prostitution, includmg incarceration in a special hospital. In addition to punishing immoral women, authorities also attempted to confine unwed mothers, females who had been raped or seduced, and those thought to be in danger of becoming prostitutes. Sometimes such women were confined in the same institution with prostitutes, but the two groups were usually separated, the incorrigible receiving harsher treatment." 32

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The early constitution of the Sisters of St.Joseph showed an awareness of the difficulties of sexually vulnerable women and addressed the ways of protecting them, while also expressing some of the more punitive gendered sentiments of the time toward "fallen women." It advised the sisters to "be watchful in providing for young girls who are in danger of losing their virtue because they have no one to help or direct them, or because they are in need of money. . . and [to] try to find a home and work for such girls. . . . [But] if they should come in contact with prostitutes, let them consider whether they should, after having punished them, have them driven out or place them in a house of ~onfinement."'~ As caregvers in a network of institutions in early modern France where the line between charity and control was not too clear, the csjs themselves staffed several houses for the confinement of women. The Providence in Vienne was one of the first; others included a prison for prostitutes in Lyons and establishments known as Bon Pasteur (Good Shepherd) in Clermont and Avignon. The Lyons prison was part of a larger complex that also included a refuge for penitent women run by the Sisters of the Visitation. In time the number of women in the prison increased to eighty, and shortly before the Revolution the administrators were planning to enlarge the building. Meanwhde, the csj community there had expanded from the origmal three sisters to twelve. In a document dating from 1790 a revolutionary official made derogatory and obscene comments about the House of Penitents and the Visitation nuns but also praised the organization of the prison and the way the women were treated and taught to work. The csjs were not mentioned, but they were the ones responsible for the humane atmosphere in the prison and for helping the women learn a useful trade." The Bon Pasteur in Clermont included both penitent women and prostitutes interned by the police, but the prostitutes were kept in cells apart from the rest of the house and were supervised by the administrators rather than the sisters. As in Lyons, the growing number of residents caused an increase in the size of the sisters7community, and a novitiate was established. Eventually the administrators authorized construction of a larger facdity, but loss of funding threatened its completion until the csj superior, Mother Saint-Agnes Labas, decided that the sisters could help financially by opening a boarding school for young ladies, a strategy often used by European nuns at this time and later in the United States. Within three years the new school had twenty-seven students, providing sufficient revenue to complete the construction and help maintain the penitents. Besides their work with penitents and students in the boarding school, the The French Connection

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sisters housed and educated about twelve chddren from poor famdies and cared for two elderly and eight insane women. With twelve sisters, two novices, and five servants, the house had close to IOO residents in 1772, not counting the prostitutes. As in other contemporary institutions of this type, the daily routine of the penitents at the Bon Pasteur consisted of work and prayer. The women followed the convent schedule, which included morning and evening prayer, Mass, Office of the Holy Spirit, Office of the Blessed Virgin, examination of conscience, spiritual reading, and other prayers at specified times during the day. The sisters also provided spiritual formation for the residents by giving instructions based on passages from the Gospel or chapters of the catechism. When not engaged in religious exercises the women worked, mainly at sewing and embroidery. The women ate their meals in silence whde they listened to spiritual reading, and one of the sisters was present to monitor the hour of recreation permitted in the evening. Not all of the penitents were amenable to this routine, and occasional escapes occurred, sometimes facihtated by the sisters if the escapee had been particularly disruptive and unmanageable. In addition to the semimonastic schedule of religious duties and work, most institutions for the poor and "deviant" used corporal punishment as an incentive to good behavior. The General Hospital in Paris had whipping posts and dungeons, and the Refuge of &om run by the apparently draconian Ladies of Mercy used leg and hand irons and other more esoteric equipment. At the Bon Pasteur in Clermont penitents were usually kept in cells when first admitted and urged to make their confession in order to be transferred into more comfortable quarters. However, the sisters' financial accounts do not mention chains, handcuffs, and other items listed in the invoices of the administrators. These were probably reserved for the women held in the cells, but it is difficult to be sure. The csjs may have used corporal punishment, since it was taken for granted at the time, but they also tried more positive means of behavior modification. Mother Saint-Agnes developed a rating system by which the penitents' progress in good conduct was noted by the sisters and rewarded.*O Besides their work in hospitals, refuges, schools, and other institutions in larger towns and cities, the csjs were also present in large numbers in the rural countryside. Their first known community was in the small village of Dunickes, and until the Revolution the majority of csj houses were rural. Village cotnmunities were typically small, consisting of three to six sisters, and accommodations were very simple, sometimes a rented room, although 34

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in most cases sisters eventually managed to obtain a small house. In a village the nuns were likely to be daughters of local families and typically expected to spend their entire lives in the area. The family ties, patterns of speech and custom, and modest social and economic status that they shared with the villagers made the sisters an integral part of the local community and facilitated their mission, which usually involved provision of most of the educational and charitable services in the locality. The csjs always staffed the local elementary school, teaching catechism, reading, writing, and practical slulls, including lace making, whch was centered in the Le Puy area. In some cases they were entirely responsible for the religious education of parish women and held weekly catechism classes for them. They also served as sacristans for the church. Since separation of church and state did not exist in France prior to the Revolution, the parish was responsible for public assistance, which usually meant that the sisters did whatever needed to be done. They maintained small drspensaries where the sick and poor could obtain medicines, bedding, and other necessities, visited and cared for the sick in their homes, and distributed alms to the poor, often from the small local hospital or schoolhouse. Their importance to village communities is indcated in a testimonial from the parish of Job: They continually attend to the instruction of the young girls both of the parish 'of Job and of the places nearby. They take into their houseand particularly during the winter when farm work comes to a haltas many little peasants as they have space for, and give them room and board at a low price. In general, they instruct them thoroughly in the principles of religion and piety; they teach them to read, to write, and to work, in order to train them one day to be mothers who are equally hard-workmg and Christian. . . . [They] comfort the sick poor.81

The French Revohtion and After The Revolution in 1789 brought radical change to religious institutions in France. The Catholic Church came under attack as an important pillar of the old order and was used as a means of alleviating governmental bankruptcy. It was secularized and most of its lands confiscated, and a new Civil Constitution of the Clergy provided that bishops and priests would be paid by the state. Clergy were required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Civil Constitution, but since the pope forbade it, only j 4 percent of the The French Connection

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parish clergy complied and only 7 of the I 60 bishops did so. The new religous policies caused deep divisions among the people and made the Catholic Church, which continued to be very influential, an enemy of the Revolution. In 1789 religious communities staffed 2,200 hospitals and the great majority of schools in France. Lacking a lay nursing service and a substitute for the teaching congregations, the government, although suppressing monastic orders and seizing their property, allowed active religous communities like the c s to~continue ~ for a time.82 In the Massif Central, where most of the Sisters of St. Joseph were located, popular resistance to the Civil Constitution was widespread and many priests refused the oath. Most sisters actively resisted secular authority by supporting these "refractory" priests, since they shared their opinions, and invited them to say Mass in their convents when they were excluded from the churches. csjs also expressed subversive views to parishioners and students by encouraging them to hear Mass at the convent rather than attend services of the "constitutional" clergy. In Craponne one of the Sisters of St. Joseph was denounced to the authorities for "having accused the new constitutional cur&of being an intruder, a fanatic, and a schismatic, saying that it was better to sit by her fire than go to pis] mas^."^' Revolutionary leaders, soon forced to cope with foreign and civil war and severe economic distress while trying to transform the government, became increasingly radicalized and intolerant of opposition, including that of religious congregations. In a 1792 Assembly debate on whether to exempt hospitallers from suppression, the Sisters of St. Joseph were singled out for criticism: "Those of thesefilles [csjs] who know how to read and write have managed to turn themselves into charlatans: some are lawyers, the others doctors, pharmacists, and even surgeons. You would therefore, under these exceptions, allow to exist in the countryside this vermin which lays them waste, and you would preserve establishments which have become the haunt and foul refuge of all the refractory priests."84In August 1792 the Assembly suppressed all religious congregations, declared their belongmgs national property, and ordered them to evacuate "the national houses which they occupy." However, since many local officials tended to be lenient with the sisters, especially in the Haute Loire, the csjs' treatment varied according to local circumstances. Most Sisters of St. Joseph did leave their houses after August 1792, but timing varied and a few hospital communities apparently remained undsturbed throughout the entire Revolution. The greatest danger came during the Terror in 1793-94. The Law of Suspects of September 1793, so vague 36

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that almost anyone could be arrested under suspicion of disloyalty, and the Oath of Liberty-Equality imposed on former religious in October 1793, whtch most refused as equivalent to renouncing the faith, accounted for the imprisonment of many. Some of the sisters were incarcerated in their former convents, which as properties of the state had been turned into prisons for women. Four, possibly five, csjs were guillotined during the Terror, all for the crime of helping to conceal refractory priests.x5 In the aftermath of the Terror many sisters were asked to return to hospitals they had been forced to leave. At Gap all the former hospitallers returned to help when Austrian soldiers taken prisoner by Napoleon and suffering from typhus were brought to the hospital. Religious education also revived, and private grls' schools reappeared in former csj locations such as Le Puy, Craponne, Saint-Georges-l'Agricol, Beaune, Chomtlix, and Saint-Paulien. With the end of the Revolution, many St. Joseph communities began to reorganize, some pichng up where they left off, others combining members from several earlier csj houses. Initially all were selfcontained convents under their local superior, as had been true before the Revolution, but the reconstituted communities were operating in a new environment. Many suffered from the permanent loss of their former property, and all had to live under the conditions imposed in Napoleon's Concordat of I 801, which made peace with the church but permitted considerable government regulation of its affairs. Napoleon's religious policy, including toleration of active religious, was based on purely pragmatic considerations-the need to stabilize h s regime and remedy the chaotic postrevolutionary state of French charitable and educational institutions. He also understood the need for women's labor and that it could easily be exploited. Local officials took the lead in recruiting the sisters, recopzing their value, as hospital administrators at Btziers indicated: "With them [the sisters] no need whatever for seamstresses, for a cook, for an apothecary, for serving-boys, or for almost any domestics at all; there are virtually no wages to outside help. What appears as an expense for them is recovered on the other hand with interest by means of their industrious charity." Describing his plan for running local primary schools efficiently, a rector at Lyons wrote to Napoleon: "These filles . . . are satisfied with a very modest salary. Moreover, they live more cheaply than a schoolmaster; they have no family to support and they thus devise a way to survive where a male teacher would die of hunger. They art furthermore, pious, respectful, and submissive toward their pastors, who for this reason prefer them to a male teacher, from whom it cannot be The French Connection

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hoped to have good work, because there is nothing to offer him in order to attract or keep him."" Under Napoleon only "useful" and "compliant" religious communities were allowed to exist and all had to submit their statutes and rules for governmental approval and formal authorization. Napoleon had dreamed of uniting all women's congregations in one single group, but when advisers convinced him this would never succeed, he subjected them to secular authorities in civil and police matters and to the local bishop in ecclesiastical affairs. Encouraged by the government, most French bishops promoted centralization of communities within their jurisdiction, and in the following years many diocesan congregations appeared. Some sisters, such as the Ursulines, remained in autonomous houses, but the Sisters of St. Joseph gradually became diocesan communities with local houses grouped under a motherhouse and a superior general subject to the local bishop. The largest of the new diocesan communities, centered in Lyons under its superior general Mother St. John Fontbonne, generated the first csj missionary foundation in North A m e r i ~ aIn . ~ I~836 Mother St. John sent six sisters from the Lyons motherhouse to the United States to establish the Sisters of St. Joseph in the recently created diocese of St. Louis. The main initiative for this project came from a laywoman who exemplified the intense religious fervor of many Catholics in postrevolutionary France. Ftliciti: de Duras, countess de la Rochejaquelin, had read the appeals for missionaries and financial aid from Joseph Rosati, bishop of St. Louis, in the Annales of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, an organization centered in Lyons. She knew the Sisters of St. Joseph, having already assisted them in establishing houses in France, and decided to offer financial support to send a group of sisters to America. After obtaining a promise from Mother St.John Fontbonne that she would provide sisters for St. Louis if the bishop requested them, she wrote to Rosati in June I 83 j to explain her plan and her reasons for choosing the csjs: I promised God, insofar as he would deign to bless t h s design, to send six Sisters of Saint Joseph to North America to convert the savages, to teach their children and those of Protestant families, and to convert also those to whom the missionaries, too busy or too few, are able to make but passing visits. . . . [The sisters'] rule obliges them to all the virtues of the cloister, joined to those whch exact an ardent charity for their fellow beings. . . . [Tlheir spirit of poverty and humility. . . is evangelical. . . . I know a foundation which began in a stable and with only six 38

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cents. . . . [Tlhis establishment prospered, as well as others begun in a like manner. The countess indicated the qualifications of the csjs for the new enterprise by mentioning their multiple activities in "free schools and boarding schools of paying students, large hospitals and homes for the aged or for abandoned chddren, prisons, help for the poor and the sick in their homes, the care of those afflicted with scurvy and other s h n diseases . . . the upkeep of small dispensaries in some of their houses, manual labor, sewing or even the trades. In Lyon they make ribbons."88 Bishop Rosati accepted the offer and asked that two additional sisters be sent to teach deaf children. By the time she agreed to the foreign mission in America, Mother St. John Fontbonne, age seventy-six, was a seasoned leader and decision maker. Appointed superior at Monistrol in 178j, she had led her community through the turbulent revolutionary period, enduring nine months of imprisonment and reportedly the threat of execution. After the Revolution she reestablished the csj community in St. Etienne and later became superior general of all csj houses in the Lyons diocese. Under her direction the congregation attracted large numbers of novices and expanded rapidly to number some zoo foundations when she finally retired in I 839.89 The mission to America followed an established pattern of generous response to human need. Mother St. John readily agreed to send two sisters for the necessary training in deaf education and began the process of selecting the first six sisters for St. Louis. From the large group who volunteered, the chosen missionaries included Febronie and Delphne Fontbonne, nieces of Mother St. John, Marguerite-Fklicitt Boutt, Febronie Chapellon, Saint Protais Deboille, and Philomene Vilaine. The two who would follow later were Celestine Pommerel and Juhe Fournier, a postulant. The six sisters left Lyons by stagecoach on January 4, I 836, and after brief stays in Paris and Havre, boarded the Natchex for the journey to America and their new life. Although the young French-speaking Catholic nuns who set out for St. Louis in I 8 36 faced many daunting challenges in a foreign and largely Protestant setting, their heritage gave them certain advantages. Probably most important was the flexibility of their constitution, which allowed them to respond to virtually every need they encountered w i t h the gendered parameters of nineteenth-century American society, whether in educational, health-related, or social service areas. Almost equally significant The French Connection

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were the resourcefulness and adaptability learned "on the job" in the varied and sometimes difficult circumstances of csj houses in France. The foundation "begun in a stable and with only six cents" would have its parallels in the United States, where the sisters would many times subsist on their own earnings and offer services gratis. Also useful was their experience in dealing with patriarchal authority and the sometimes not so benevolent despotism of French ecclesiastics, for they would encounter similar obstacles in America, where bishops reigned supreme in their dioceses and sisters were perceived as a readily exploitable labor source. Even the hosd t y of American Protestants was not totally foreign to the French sisters after the experiences of the Revolution and the climate of anticlericalism that reappeared in France with the July Revolution of 1830. In America csjs would also enjoy the friendship and assistance of laywomen, benefactors like those who had appeared at key points in their previous history. Finally, the vast expansion of the role of women in church and society that began in response to the exigencies of Counter Reformation Europe would continue in the United States in the context of a rapidly expanding Catholic population seehng to meet its educational and charitable needs. As so often in the past, social and religous crisis gave women opportunities to realize their potential and expand gender parameters in both secular and religious settings.

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the United States and successfully established American foundations. In her study on American sisters in the nineteenth century, Mary Ewens states, "Since Canon Law definitions of the role of nuns in the nineteenth century were based on medieval European attitudes toward women, one would expect that role conflict would occur when American women of the nineteenth century tried to live according to them and that various adjustments would have to be made to reduce the conflict. This is exactly what ha~pened."~ In the early nineteenth century, Catholic sisters coming from European convents rarely received the warm reception described by Sister St. Protais, or if they did it was often short-lived. For many nativists, "American" meant not only white and Anglo-Saxon but also Protestant. Except in a few eastern cities, American Catholics were a small minority in the United States until the late nineteenth century3However, during the three decades prior to the Civil War, with burgeoning numbers of Irish and German Catholics emigrating to America, many priests and male and female religious found themselves in settings where their patriotism was often questioned and where violence against clergy, churches, and religious was a reality of life. In I 8 30 The Protestant, an anti-Catholic weekly, began publication with the objective "to inculcate Gospel doctrines against Romish corruptions . . . to maintain the purity and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures against Monhsh Traditions," asserting that no article would be printed unless it promoted this goaL4Although prior to the I 8 30s relationships between Protestants and Catholics had been good in St. Louis, The Protestant and Eli P. Lovejoy's St. Lozlk Observer denounced the Catholic Church and inflamed passions that produced mobs and threats against the csjs and other Catholic institutions up until the Civil War.5 Beginning in antebellum America and continuing throughout the nineteenth century, groups such as the American Protestant Association, the Know-Nothing Party, the I >. j j . Rapley, Diuotes, I I j . 76. Byrne, "French Roots," I I I - r z. j 7. Vacher, "R&uliires," Annexe j . 5 8. According to Byrne, dowries typically ranged between 300 and loo limes in the Lyons and Le Puy dioceses in the seventeenth century but increased to about 1,800 limes at Le Puy by the late eighteenth century. This supports Vacher's comment that the sisters' social level seemed to rise in the course of the eighteenth cmtury. It did not approach that of the aristocratic women who entered traditional cloistered orders, where dowries of 7,joo to 8,000 livres were usual. Byrne, "French Roots," A - 8 6 ; Vacher, "RegLllires," 5 z I. 39. Intensified religious persecution under Louis XIV, culminating in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 168 j, meant that after that year French Protestants had to choose either conversion or emigration if they wished to avoid severe penalties. Go. Information about the CSJs' work in institutions and parishes and their working and living conditions is from Vacher and Byrne unless otherwise noted. 61. Byrne says the Le Puy community reported 2,896 livres in revenue and 5,100 in expenses in 1787 ("French Roots," 281). 62. Byrne, "French Roots," I I 4. 6 3. Hu fton, Poor of Eighteenth-Centwy France, I 3 I , r 3 4. 64. Byrne, "French Roots," r 34. 6 5. Details about Mother Jeanne Burdier's accomplishments as superior and later developments in Vienne are from Vacher, z I 3 - > I . 66. Byrne, "French Roots," I 3 I - j 3. ByrneS account of the legal battle in Sauxillanges is based on an article by A. Achard in the Revue JActuergne (I 904). Records of the sisters' response to Arnauld's allegations may not have been available to Achard since Byrne does not include this information. 67. Letters patent gave a religious community or institution the status of a legal corporation with rights to control property and act in legal matters. The crown's policy in granting them was vague, and few pre-Revolutionary CSJ communities managed to obtain them. Taylor, "From Proselytizing to Social Reform," 397; Byrne, "French Roots," 276. 6 8. Rapley, De'uotes, I 76. 69. MCdaille, Cbnstitutions, I o. 70. Quoted in RapIey, Dhotes, r 69. 7 I . The discussion of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century girls' education in France is based on Rapley, Diuotes, 142-66, and Martine Sonnet, "A Daughter to Educate,'' in14 H i r i o ~ of Womenin the West,vol. 3 , Renaissance andEnlightenmentParadoxes, ed. Natalie Zernon Davis and Arlette Farge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, I 99 j), ror-16. 72. Vacher, "R&uiiPres"; Byrne, "French Roots." 7 3 . The revocation of the Edict of Nantes required Protestant schools in France to close, and subsequent royal edicts made elementary education, including religious

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instruction, compulsory (theoretically) for all children, in effect forcing Catholic education on the nominal converts (Briggs, Communities ofkleliej; zoo). 74. Rapley, Diuotes, I j 7. 7 j . Sonnet, "Daughter to Educate," I I 7- z I . 76. Ibid., I 14; Vacher, "Rt'gulie'res,'' 326. 77. Kathryn Norberg, "Prostitutes," in Davis and Farge, A Histor_ )lWomen in the West, 3:460 -6 j ;Weisner, Women and Gender, I 01; Wilma Pugh, "Social Welfare and the Edict of Nantes: Lyon and Nimes," French HictoricalXtudies 8 (1974): 369 -72. 7 8. Medaille, Constitutions, I I , 30. 79, Vacher, "R&lie'res," z j 4 - j 9 . "Penitent" was the term commonly used for repentant prostitutes but also for unwed mothers or girls who had been seduced, even if they had no responsibility for what had happened to them. In general, "penitent" referred to women who had lost respectability but were not considered incorrigible. 80. Ibid., 322-34. 8 I . Quoted in Byrne, "French Roots," n 9, 126. 82. For the origins of the Revolution see Georges Lefebvre, The Coming @the French Revolution, trans. R. R. Palmer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), and 'William Doyle, Or@ns ofthe French Iievolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, I 988). For later developments and the Napoleonic period see Norman Hampson, PIEError in the French Revolution (London: IIistorical Association of Great Britain, 1981); J. McManners, The French Revolution and the Chzrrch (London: S.P.C.K. for the Church Historical Society, 1969); F. Markham, Napoleon (New York: New American Library, 1963); and P. Geyl, Napoleon: ForandAgainst (New Haven: Yale University Press, I 963). 8 3. Byrne, "French Roots," I 6 I . 84. Ibid., 163. 8 j . The CSJs executed during the Terror were Marie-Anne Garnier and JeanneMarie Aubert (possibly the former Sister Saint-Alexis), who were guillotined with two other women, a layman, and a priest at Le Puy; and Antoinette Vincent, Marie-Anne Senovert, and Madeleine Dumoulin, guillotined with four priests at Privas. Ironically, the victims at Privas were executed shortly after the fall of Robespierre, when the Terror was almost at an end. 86. Byrne, "French Roots," I 86, 201. 87. The French census of I 808 reports a total of 439 sisters of St. Joseph in 66 houses in the dioceses of Clermont, Lyons, and Le Puy. Of these, 261 sisters and 39 houses were in Lyons. The number of sisters in 1836 is not available, but by that time there were r o j houses in the Lyons diocese (ibid., 202, 210). 88. Felicitt de Duras to Bishop Rosati, Chambery, June 10, 183j, copy and translation in ACSJC-SLP; orignal in AASL. 89. Records of the Lyons motherhouse show that the number of novices received from I 8 j 2 to I 8 36 was j j 4 (Byrne, "French Roots:' 32 I).

Chapter Two I . Memoirs of Sr. St. Protais Deboille, ACSJC-SLl? Sr. St. Protais was the only member of the original six who recorded her expericnces and thoughts about the

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Notes topages 31-41

journey and early days of the community. She handwrote this memoir (around I 890) in her somewhat "broken" English. She died in I 892 at the age of seventy-eight. 2 . Mary Ewens, The Role ofthe Nm in Nineteenth-Centmy America (New York: Arno Press, I 978), 7. Her book and subsequent work provide some of the earliest scholarship on nineteenth-century American nuns. Canon law is the official body of laws that govern the Roman Catholic Church. Richard l? McBrien, ed., The EnycLqbedid o f Catholicism (San Francisco: HarperCollins, I 99 r), 2 I 9 - 20. 3. Catholic population data is difficult to assess, particularly prior to the Civil War. Gerald Shaughnessy,Has ths Immigrant K i t the FaithZA Stn4 of Imm&ration and Catholic Growth in the UnitedStat~s,1790-1920 (New York: Macrnillan, 192 j), I 34,14>, estimates the Catholic population at 660,000 (I 840), I .6 million (I 8 > o), and 3. I million (I 860). For additional information including regional maps displaying concentrations of Catholic populations see Edwin Scott Gaustad, HistoricalAtlas ofReligion in America (New York: Harper and Row, I 976), 1 0 3 - I 2. 4. Cited in Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Cmsade d'oo-186o:A Sttldy ofthe O@ns ofAmericanNativism (New York: Rinehart, I 93 8; rcprint, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, I 964, 5 3. Billington's bookis still considered one of the best descriptions of the antiCatholic mood prevalent in antebellum America. For more recent discussion on the anti-Catholic climate of the early nineteenth century see Jenny Franchot, Roads t o Rome: TheAntebelkm Protestant Encou~terwith Gtholin'sm (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Franchot analyzes "the discourse through which antebellum writers of popular and elite fictional and historical texts indirectly voiced the tensions and limitations of mainstream Protestant culture." See also Jay Dolan, TheAmerican CatholicExperience: A Histovfrom Colonial Emes to the Present (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, r985), zo1--3,29j. 5 . Nikola Baumgarten, "Education and Democracy in Frontier St. Louis: The Society of the Sacred Heart," Hirtoy ofEdncationQaarter~34, no. z (Summer I 994): r 7 I -92. William £5. Faherty, Dream ly fhe River: Two Centnries afSaint Louis Catholicicm, 1766-1980, rev. ed. (St. Louis: River City Pub., I 98 I), 44-48, 76; and "Nativism and Midwestern Education: The Experience of St. Louis University, I 832- I 8 56,'' Histoy ofEdzrcation Quarter4 8 (Winter 1968): 447- > 8. See also an early history of the St. Louis diocese by John Rothensteiner, his tor^, ofthe Archdiocese ofst. Louis, 2 vols. (St. Louis: Blackwell Wielandy Co., 1928). The violence against CSJs that took place in I 846 probably resulted from a combination of racism and anti-Catholic sentiments; it will be described later in this chapter. 6. Gaustad, HixtoricalAtlas, 108. Although activities, membership, and length and region of influence varied, the beginning dates for these groups are as follows: American Protestant Association (I 8 4 4 , the Know-Nothing Party (18>4),the I 105-6. 10. Mary Lucida Savage, The Congregation ofSt.Joseph o f Carondelet: A BriefAcconnt of Its Origin and Its Work in the United States, 16~0-ryzz (St. Louis: Herder Book Co., I 92 j), 36- 37. Rothensteiner, Histo7 oftheArchdioceseofst. Luis, I :joo, 3 14,447,626,634. St. Louis's population grew rapidly between I 830 and I 840 from j ,000 (whites) to over 14,000, and Bishop Rosati sought additional sisters to support the growing Catholic population. U.S. Bureau of Census, Flfth Census ofthe United States and Sixth Census ofthe linited States (Washington, D.C., U.S. Census Bureau, I 830 and I 840). I I . Memoirs of Sr. St. Protais Deboille, I j - 2 3. The following narrative information and all quoted material about arrivals at Cahokia and Carondelet are taken from Sr. Protais's memoirs. Although she was with the original three sent to Cahokia, she became ill and was sent to Carondelet to recover. This placed her in the position of being present in the earliest time periods at both missions. The material on the early foundations has been further researched and elaborated by Savage, Congregation $3, Joseph, 27 - j o, and Dolorita Maria Dougherty et al., eds., .Sitters ofSt.Josepb ofCarondelet (St. Louis: Herder Book Co., 1966), j I -64. I 2. Cahokia, Illinois, was located on the "bottoms" of the eastern bank of the Mississippi kver, and serious epidemics and floods continually plagued the village. In I 844, a major flood destroyed the sisters' convent and school and almost cost them their lives. They were rescued by boat from their second-story windows. I11 and discouraged, the CSJs did not return to Cahokia unul I 848; they closed the school per-

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manently in I 8 J j when once again floodwaters threatened their lives (I 8 1 I) and after two cholera epidemics (I 849, I 8 j I ) killed thousands, including three CSJs who were nursing the sick. I 3. Although government payment for services was the exception rather than the rule, the CSJs and other religious communities did secure state monies for short periods of time. The CSJ school for the deaf in St. Louis received monies from the legslature between I 839 and 1847. Bishop Rosati's political connections helped secure state money since the CSJ school was the only school for the deaf in the state. Locally, the city paid the sisters temporarily to educate girls between six and eighteen years of age. Dougherty et al., Sirters ofst.Joseph, 67. Later, the CSJs also received some government monies for schools on Indian reservations. These contracts and subsidy arrangements occurred more in the nineteenth century than the twentieth century because local, state, or federal officials desperately needed the sisters' services, particularly in isolated settings. 14. Ewens, Role ofthe Nun, 6j-69. Although the CSJs did not use slave labor, Ewens states that many religious communities did, and no communities that used slaves failed to survive in the American milieu. The eight communities that used slaves were the Sisters of Charity, Carmelites, Sisters of Loretto, Visitandines, Nazareth Sisters of Charity, Dominicans, Religious of the Sacred Heart, and New Orleans's Ursulines. I J . Memoirs of Sr. St. Protais Deboille, 2 J ; Savage, Congregation ofSt..Joseph, 46 -47. 16. The term "Mother" is used instead of "Sister" when the individual serves as the superior or leader at a mission site or local community. I 7. Memoirs of Sr. St. Protais Deboille, 26 - 28. I 8. "Copy of a Letter from Mother St. John Fournier to the Superior General of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Lyons, I 873," cited in Maria Kostka Logue, Skters ofst. .Joseph ofPhiladelphia:A Century @Growth and Development, 1847-1947 (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 19 JO), 327- J Z . Mother St. John, who later became the superior of the Philadelphia community, described her voyage with Sr. Celestine Pommerel. Held in Havana because of the outbreak of yellow fever in New Orleans, the sisters did not arrive in St. Louis when expected. Bishop Rosati became concerned and feared they were lost at sea. When they arrived weeks late and in secular dress Rosati had them demonstrate their ability to communicate in sign language before he was convinced they were indeed his long-awaited nuns. Teasing them, the bishop "scolded" them by saying he had believed they had run away with the 400 soldiers who were also on the ship. I 9. This was more than a clash of male egos. In Europe it was customary for communities to be assigned a specific cleric as "spiritual father" who advised the sisters. In the United States, the shortage of priests did not always make this possible, so the practice was often ignored or the local parish priest served in this capacity. Father Saulnier regarded the sisters as "his community" since they resided in his parish, and he felt Father Fontbonne was usurping his authority with the sisters (Dougherty et al., Sisters ofst.Jososeph, 6 8). 2 0 . Letter from Fr. Edmund Saulnier to Bishop Rosati, October j, I 837. Between October I 8 37 and December I 83 8, Saulnier wrote the bishop nine letters concerning

Notes to Pages 41 -47

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the CSJs and his concerns about Fontbonne (copies of Eng. trans. ACSJC-SLP; originals in AASL). 21. Letters from Fr. Saulnier to Bishop Rosati, November 24 and 27, 1837, 22. Letter from Fr. Fontbonne to Bishop Rosati, May 26, I 837 (copy of Eng. trans. ACSJC-SLP; original in AASL). 2 3. Bishop Rosati's appointment of Sr. Delphine to head the Carondelet group was surprising. At twenty-three, she was the second youngest member of the original six from Lyons. He may have done this out of respect for her aunt, Mother St. John Fontbonne, who allowed the group to come to St. Louis, or it is quite possible that he might have relied on Fr. Fontbonne, who came with the sisters, to make the decision. Based on Fontbonne's affection for his younger sister and his own desire for influence, Sr. Delphine certainly would have been his first choice. 24. Letter from Sr. Mary Joseph Dillon to Bishop Rosati, March 22, I 838, copy in ACSJC-SLP; original in AASL. Unfortunately, her physical problems continued; in I 842 she died of consumption. 25. Letter from Sr. St. John Fournier to Bishop Rosati, November 24, I 837, and (n.d.), I 838 (copy in ACSJC-SLP; original in AASL). 26. The importance of these actions cannot be overemphasized in regard to CSJ survival. The coalition of Srs. Celestine Pommerel, St. John Fournier, and Mary Joseph Dillon proved to be an important one. Highly respected, Pommerel became superior and led the CSJs for eighteen years. Fournier eventually founded the Philadelphia community, and Dillon remained the only American-born novice and native English-speaker until I 841 (CSJ Profession Book, ACSJC-G). 27. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to blast his nemesis, Fr. Fontbonne, Saulnier, after lambasting Mother Delphine, added, "She has the same character as her brother (rustic)." Letter from Fr. Saulnier to Bishop Rosati, February 9, I 83 8. 28. Although her early youthful struggles as superior were traumatic, Mother Delphine Fontbonne continued with the American CSJs and, after spending one year in the CSJ Philadelphia community, was missioned in I 8 5 I as the first CSJ superior in their newly established mission in Toronto, Canada. She led this community unul her death in I 8 5 6 at age forty-two. Her sister, Febronie Fontbonne, continued in poor health after her dramatic rescue in the woods and later in the I 844 flood at Cahokia. Subsequent illness forced her to return with Sr. Febronie Chapellon, another of the original six sisters, to France in I 844, where she lived and worked until her death in I 88 I at the age of seventy-five. 29. CSJ Profession Book; Savage, Congrgution of.St..joseph, 5 5 - 5 6. 30. This bill was adopted February 8, I 839; cited in Savage, Congregation ofst. Joseph, 5 2. It was not repealed until I 847, when the legislature finally provided money for a state institute. 3 I . "Minutes of the Board of Trustees," April 23, I 8 39, cited in Savage, Cbngregation $9.Joseph, 5 3. See also, "Copy of a Letter from Mother St. John Fournier," 329. Fournier stated that although it was short on cash "the city paid us every year in land." The city hired a male teacher for the boys of the village. 52. The Mullanphy family were early donors to Catholic charities in St. 1,ouis. Cotton merchant and realtor John Mullanphy contributed land for a hospital for the

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poor, regardless of their "color, country or religion," and gave a house to the Sacred Heart Sisters for the first girls' school in St. Louis. In 1850, the Sisters of Charity opened a facility for elderly women and orphans in a building bequeathed by the Mullanphy family. See Mary J. Oates, 72e Catholic Philnnthropic Tradition irzAmerica (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 199>), I 0, 30. 3 3. Memoirs of Eliza McKenney Brouillet, I 890 -9 I , ACSJC-SLP. See also Savage, Congrtgation ofst. Joseph, j 6 -60. 34. "Statistics of Carondelet School and St. Joseph's Academy," ACSJC-SIE 3 j . Memoirs of Eliza McKenney Brouillet. Information about St. Joseph's Academy has been taken from Broudlet's memoirs unless noted otherwise. 3 6. Ewens, Role ofthe Nun, 67 -69; Baumgarten, "Education and Democracy," I 73; Maureen Fitzgerald, "Irish-Catholic Nuns and the Development of New York City's Welfare System, I 840-1900'' (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1992), 234. Academies and parish schools will be discussed extensively in Chapters 1 and 6. 37. Ewens, Role ofthe Nun, 69. 38. Savage, Con~regationofst. Joseph, 66. 39. CSJ Profession Book. This ledger includes demographic data on name, birthplace, residence before entrance, entrance date, province, reception date, profession date, and date of death for all sisters who took final vows in the community. This does not include data on any women who left the community during the postulant or novice stage. 40. Memoirs of Sr. St. Protais Deboile, 29; "Copy of a Letter from Mother St. John Fournier," 3 3 2 - 3 3 . Mother St. John and Sr. Protais were both assigned to the school, so their memoirs were based on firsthand information. The CSJs were not the only group of nuns to battle with locals over education for blacks prior to the Civil War. See Baumgarten, "Education and Democracy," 176-77. 41. This undated and unsigned quote is from a longer essay recorded in the "Community Annals" and cited in Savage, Congregation ofst.Joseph, 64. 42. "Copy of a Letter from Mother St. John Fournier," 333. "Extract from the Records of St. Louis Diocese," Book 1:221, copy ACSJC-SLP, original AASL. The CSJs had to take this threat very seriously and probably understood that not only racism but also anti-Catholic bigotry was involved. Only one year earlier, anti-Catholic sentiments had surfaced in St. Louis when the Jesuit St. Louis University Medical School had been harassed by a mob who threatened to burn the school to the ground. See Faherty, "Nativism and Midwestern Education," 447- j 8. In I 847 the state of hhssouri passed a law prohibiting the education of slaves. 43. In St. Louis and later in Philadelphia, the CSJs took over the institution from the Sisters of Charity, who withdrew from the male orphanage upon their affiliation with the French Daughters of Charity, whose constitution banned working with male orphans. See Byrne, "Sisters of St. Joseph," 214. Byrne goes on to explain that the problem often was not with the women's communities but with European-born, male clerics who dld not think it was proper for nuns to work with male children, particularly adolescent boys. For a discussion on the Sisters of Charity and their battle with Archbishop John Hughes on this issue see Fitzgerald, "Irish-Catholic Nuns," 2 50- 5 3 . 44. This was St. Joseph's Hospital in Philadelphia. Although the CSJs maintained

Notes to Pages 1I - j4 ( 243

it for only ten years, it was an important step in furthering the CSJ mission in America. For a detailed description of the facility and its history see Logue, Sisten ofSLJoseph, 47-56. 41. CSJ Profession Book. This number is approximate because although the profession book shows that 149 women had been professed by I 8 j7, there had been a few

deaths and any novices who left before profession would not be counted in this tally. 46. CSJ Constitution (I 847), 9 - I I , ACSJC-SPP The I 847 constitution was the first English translation of the French constitution that the sisters brought with them. The French version is thought to date back to the late seventeenth century. Joseph Rosati died in I 843, and Peter Richard Kenrick succeeded him. In I 847 St. Louis became an archdiocese and Bishop Kenrick then became Archbishop Kenrick. 47. Memoirs of Sr. Febronie Boyer, ACSJC-SLP. Like Sr. Protais's memoirs, these are handwritten notes, undated but probably written around I 870, when Sr. Monica Corrigan was attempting to acquire information for a community history. 48. Ibid. 49. Savage, Congregdtion ofSt.]oseph, 112-14. Savage's book, published in 1723, is both a primary and a secondary source. Sr. Lucida Savage entered the community in I 887 and knew Mother St. John Facemaz and many of the earliest sisters, and she was an eyewitness to many events in the late nineteenth century. With a Ph.D. in history, she was able to write an objective, well-documented history incorporating her firsthand experiences with the people and events that took place in the community. yo. Ibid., I I 3 - 14. 5 I . Byrne, "Sisters of St. Joseph," z j j - j7. Byrne states and we would agree that there seems to be little written documentation in either the archives in St. Louis or Lyons on how this "mutual agreement" was achieved. Savage (108) cites correspondence from Fr. S. Auguste Paris to Mother Celestine Pommerel dating from I 8 j 6 that indicates discussions had already begun between the American and French communities. j 2. The section of the CSJ Constitution (I 860), 24- 2 j , did in fact give Archbishop Kenrick superior powers over CSJ houses in other dioceses. In I 863 Rome changed this clause, limiting Kenrick's power ("Observations of Cardinal Quaglia on the Constitutions," as cited in Byrne, "Sisters of St. Joseph," 2j7). j3. Margaret Susan Thompson, "To Serve the People of God: NineteenthCentury Sisters and the Creation of a Religious Life," Working Paper Series, Cushwa Center, University of Notre Dame, ser. 18, no. 2, Spring 1987, 7. In studying nineteenth-century communities, Mary Ewens concurs with Thompson's assessment. "When given a free hand, bishops and other [male] directors . . . could work havoc in communities under their control" (Role of the Nzm, 286). j4. For brief discussions of bishops' reactions to general government see the following histories of CSJ communities in Philadelphia, Wheeling, and Buffalo, where they became diocesan: Logue, S ' e r s ofst. Joseph, I 72-73; Rose Anita Kelly, Song ofthe Hills: The St09 ofthe Sirters $ 3 . Jo~osepho f Wheeling (Wheeling, W.Va.: Mt. St. Joseph, 1962), 203 - j; and M. Dunne, The Congregation o f St. Joseph ofthe Diocese of Burfijralo, 18~4-1933 (Buffalo: Holling Press, 1 9 3 4 ) ~87-88. These histories provide very little information on the difficult times before and after separation from St. Louis.

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Notes to Pages j j - 18

5 j. Letter from Mother St. John Facemaz to Cardinal Quaglia, I 869, ACSJC-SLP. j 6. This quote is attributed to Mother de Chantal Keating, who came from the CSJ community in Flushing, N.Y., in I 864 to lead the fledgling community in Wheeling. Byrne, "Sisters of St. Joseph," 23 8; Kelly, Jbng ofthe Hi&, 2 I I - I 2. j 7. Accordmg to all CSJ historians, Sr. St. John Fournier and Mother Celestine were

very close. Fournier had been raised as a "foster child" in Celestine's home. Fournier continued to correspond with the Pommerel family and they with her for years after Celestine's death. One author wrote that Fournier's years "without her counselor and friend, loomed lonely and difficult." Logue, Sirters OJSt.Joseph, 83 - 84. Lists of Philadelphia CSJ institutions are found in ibid., 321 - 2 J. 3 8. Memoirs of Sr. lgnatius Loyola Cox, as cited in Genevieve Schillo, "Dynamics for Change: Papal Approval for General Government in the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, 1836-1 877" (unpublished manuscript, ACSJC-SPP). Schdlo has spent years attempting to unravel the complex interactions involved in the formation of CSJ general government. We are grateful for her continuing work on this topic and her recent paper, 'Yes or No: General Government in Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and Related Daughter/Mother Houses (I 83 6- I 877):' presented at the History of Women Religious Conference at Loyola University,June 1998 Mother Seraphine died soon after general government was created. Bishop Grace continued to struggle with general government and his loss of direct control over the CSJs. The I 860s continued to be a time of turmoil for the St. Paul community, but they remained under the new constitution and did not become diocesan. 59. Byrne, "Sisters of St. Joseph," 264-66. 60. Letter to Mother Agnes Gonzaga Ryan from Sr. hl. Irene, St.Joseph's Convent, Toronto, March I 3, I 9 I 3, ACSJC-SLP. 6 I . Examples of the struggles between American bishops and women religious fill the convent archives of every congregation. The battle for autonomy in a sexist and hierarchical setting took energy, perseverance, and constant effort on the part of the sisters. Margaret Susan Thompson's work on nineteenth-century American sisterhoods provides extensive examples. See her "To Serve the People" and 'Women, Feminism, and the New Religious History: Catholic Sisters As a Case Study," in Belief and Behavior: Essqs in the New Religious History, ed. Philip R. Vandermeer and Robert P. Swerienga (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, I 991), 136-63. For other examples from a variety of community archives see George C. Stewart, Marvels of Charity: History ofAmerican Sisters and N a n s (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, 1% 1994)62. "Notes of Sr. Monica Corrigan from Sr. de Chantal Martin taken July 23, I 890, Nazareth Convent, St. Louis,'' ACSJC-SLP. Sr. de Chantal was a young nun who was one of Mother St. John Facemaz's companions during her first visit to Rome. 6 3 . The "Decree of Commendation" is dated September I 86 3 and signed by Cardinal Quaglia (original Latin decree at ACSJC-SLP); English translation appears in Savage, Congregation ofst.Jo~eph,I 19-20, Letters in support of the CSJs' constitution and general government were sent to Rome between 186 I and I 877, when final approbation was given. These letters came from bishops in St. Paul, Albany; Alton, Ill.; Dubuque, Iowa; Nashville, Tenn.; Marquette, Mich.; Natchez, Miss.; St. Joseph,

Notes to Pages 59 -61

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Mo.; Tucson; and Chicago. Archbishop Kenrick of St. Louis wrote numerous letters to the Vatican in support of the CSJ constitution, and his support was invaluable to the sisters. 64. CSJ Profession Book; Savage, Congregation ofSt.Josepb, I 60-61. 6 j. The CSJs received final approbation on May I 6, I 877. For a brief history on formation of general government and events leading up to final approbation see Emily Joseph Daly, "History of the Generalate," in Dougherty et al., .Yisters fit. Joseph, 363 - 84, and Schillo, "Dynamics for Change." 66. This story and quotes are cited in Savage, Congregation ofst. Joseph, I 30- j I . The trip to Mississippi in I 8 j j had been by stage, and the sisters and the priest traveling with them were accosted by a male passenger who verbally harassed and spit tobacco juice on them. According to the sisters, when the coach stopped to change horses the priest threw the man out of the coach and he rode the rest of the way with the driver. Later in the trip, in Mississippi, the sisters boarded one evening with a Catholic judge who "expressed fear of being mobbed if he were known to harbor nuns" (Savage, Congregation ofst.Joseph, I 04 - j). 67. Ibid., I 33 - 3 j . Demographic information about Sr. Winifred Sullivan found in CSJ Profession Book. 68. Savage, Congregation ofSt.joseph, I 3 5 69. Ewens, Role ofthe Nun, 208; Mary Denis Maher, To Bind up the Wounds: Clztholic Sirter Nurses in the U S . Civil War (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989), 27-43, This book is extremely well documented and is probably the best source on Catholic sisters' nursing activities before and during the Civil War. See also Ursula Stepsis and Dolores Liptak, eds. Pioneer Healers: The Hirtoy o f Women Religious in American Health Care (New York: Crossroad, 1989). An older, less scholarly but interesting source is Ellen Ryan Jolly, Nuns on the Battlt$eld, 4th ed. (Providence, R.I.: Providence Visitor Press, 1930). Information on which orders provided nurses can be confusing because local newspaper reports and government documents typically listed all nursing nuns as Sisters of Charity or as Sisters of Mercy. 70. The CSJs in Philadelphia worked on hospital ships, and the CSJs in Wheeling had a military hospital. We will discuss the CSJs' contribution to nursing in Chapter 7. For discussions on Protestant attitudes and CSJs' interactions with soldiers and army doctors see Christopher J. Kauffman, Ministry andMeaning A Religious Histo9 af CatholicHealth Care in the United States (New York: Crossroad, I 99 j), 82 -9 j ;Carr Elizabeth Worland, "American Catholic Women and the Church to 1920'' (Ph.D. diss., St. Louis University, I 98 2), 7 2 -7 j ; Maher, To Bind up the Wounds, I 2 j - j 4; and Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work ofBenevolence:Morali& Politics and Class in the NineteenthCentuy UnitedStates (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 143 -48. 71. This information is taken from a speech given by Ambrose Kennedy (R.I.) in the House of Representatives, March I 8, 1918, cited in Jolly, Nuns on the Battlefieeld, 172 - 7 5 For more information about Mother de Chantal Keating and the CSJ nursing sisters in Wheeling see Kelly, Song ofthe Hills, 2 I 3 - 2 2 . 72. CSJ Profession Book; "General Chapter Report, I 869," ACSJC-G. Dolorita Maria Dougherty, "Chronological List of Establishments," in Dougherty et al., Jirters OfSt.Jos@h, 427 - 28.

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Notes to Pages 62 -64

73. CSJ Profession Book; Savage, Congregation ofJ%Jos@h,I j4- j 9. Joseph, I r7. Savage had an opportunity to live and work 74. Savage, Congregation 9. around Mother Agatha for seventeen years before her death, so it is quite likely that Savage heard these sayings and stories herself.

Chapter Three I . CSJ Constitution (186o), I , and (1884), I , 12, ACSJC-SLP. Most communities that came from Europe to the United States were active or apostolic. The term "apostolate" means "the saving mission of Christ in the world and the participation of Christian faithful in that mission." A smaller number of European religious orders that came to the United States were "contemplative" and followed a life of "solitude and prayer." Richard P. McBrien, ed., The Encyclopedia of Catholicism (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 199j), 76, 264. For contemplative orders to survive in America they had to provide "services" for the vast numbers of Catholic immigrants that flocked into the country in the nineteenth century. Contemplative orders such as the Carmelites and Benedictines had to begin or expand their teaching endeavor to survive financially and also to pacify American bishops who needed their services. See Mary Ewens, The Role ofthe Nun in ATineteenth-CentuyAmerica (New York: Arno Press, I 978), 34. See also Charles Warren Currier, CarmelinAmerica: A Centennial Hirtoql ofthe Di~calcedCarmelites in the United States (Darien, Ill.: Carmelite Press, I 989), and Ephrem Hollerman, The Reshaping o f a Tradition: Amekan Benedictine Women, 18p-1881 (St.Joseph, Minn.: Benedictine Press, 1994). 3. CSJ Profession Book, ACSJC-G. 4. Memoirs of Srs. Grace Aurelia Flanagan (entered I 9 I 6) and Mary Guadalupe Apodaca (entered 1917) inJubzlarse, ed. MargaretJohn Purcell (St. Louis: Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, 1981), 147, 89. j. Memoirs of Sr. Mary Charitina Flynn (entered 1900) in Purcell, Jubilarse, I . According to the written memoirs and oral interviews available, this type of mystical or spiritual experience was not unusual for some sisters. These kinds of experiences, particularly for women, have been a part of most religious traditions across cultures. For examples of the multicultural experiences of American women see Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds., In Our Own Voices:Four Centuries offl~nericanWomen?Relgotls Writng (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 199 5). 6. M. Anselm O'Brien (with Anna Marie Dickens), . . . The Likes offit0 O'Brien (Florissant, Mo.: Huntington Press, I 977), 2 j . O'Brien entered the CSJs in 191 j. 7. Maureen Fitzgerald, "Irish-Catholic Nuns and the Development of New York City's Welfare System, I 840-1900'' (Ph.D. diss., Universiq of Wisconsin, 1992), 226. 8. For examples from the Middle Ages to modern times see Gerda Lerner, The Creation ofFeminirt Consciou~nm:From the MiddleAges to 1870 (New York: Oxford University Press, I 993), 46 - 1 1 j ,and Jo Ann Kay McNamara, Sisters inA r m : CatholicN I throtlgh ~ Two Millennia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). For examples from a variety of religious traditions in the United States see Betty DeBerg, UnGodh Women: Gender and the First IVave of American Ftlndamentalirm (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, I 990); Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, R@teous Dircontent: The Women?Movement in the 2.

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Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, I 993); Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin, eds., Women of.@irit Female I,eadershz$ in theJewish and Christian Traditions (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979); and Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds., Women and Religion in America, 3 vols. (San Francisco: Harper and Row, I 98 I , I 98 3, I 986), and In Our Own Voices. 9. Marta Danylewycz, Taking the VeiLA n Alternative t o Marriage, Motherhood, and .@insterhood in Quebec, 1840-1920 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987), 96; Margaret Susan Thompson, "Discovering Foremothers: Sisters, Society, and the American Catholic Experience," in TheAmerican CatholicRelki0u.r Life, ed. Joseph M. White (New York: Garland Press, 1988), 275; Mary Ewens, "The Leadership of Nuns in Immigrant Catholicism," in Ruether and Keller, Women and Relkion, I :I or -4; Jay P. Dolan, TheAmerican CatholicExperience:A Histoyfrom Colonial Emes to the Present (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, I 98 I), 290. I o. Ewens, "Leadership of Nuns," I 07. I I . CSJ Constitution (I 884), 3 3 - 3 5. These prerequisite qualities are listed in all versions of the CSJ Constitution (I 847, ACSJC-SPP) and (I 860, 1884). In the I 860 version, the superior general was allowed to assess a dowry amount. I 2. Although entry after the age of forty was rare, sisters between thirty and thirtynine years of age did enter the community in significant numbers, accounting for I 9 percent of candidates between 1836 and 1920. The mean age of first marriage for American women was 22.0 (I 890), 2 I .9 ( I ~ o o )and , 2 I .6 (I91o) (HirtoricalStatisticsofthe United States: From Colonial Tzmes to 1970 Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Commerce, '9711, 19). I 3. The dowry was a continuous stumbling block for European orders that were transplanted to the United States. Since the vast majority of the Catholic population in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were working-class, even Americanborn girls had difficulty in fulfilling dowry obligations. Most US. communities had to make exceptions on this issue even though most constitutions required between $100 and $ j oo for a dowry. See Fitzgerald, "Irish Catholic Nuns:' 2 3 8 - 39, and Ewens, Role ofthe Nun, I 3 j . 14. Letter from Mother St. John Facemaz to Bishop Peter Richard Kenrick, February I o, I 868, and letter from Kenrick to Facemaz, March I 7, I 868, ACSJC-SLP and AASL. I 5. Postulant and Novitiate Records can be found at all four CSJ provincial a r c h e s (ACSJC-SLP, ACSJC-SPP, ACSJC-LAP, ACSJC-AP). If dowry payment is used as a means to determine class diversity of the candidates, the records indicate a broad range of socioeconomic levels. 16. Although all CSJ Constitutions mandated separation of postulants, novices, and professed, this was not always possible in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the early days of the community, lack of space made separation impossible. Even when more living space became available, second-year novices were needed in the workforce, so they often lived and worked with professed sisters away from the novitiate. 17. "Postulant Outfit:' CSJ Customs Book ( I 868), 141-46, ACSJC-SLP. Besides the clothes the candtdates were to bring six yards of white bleached muslin, six yards

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of blue calico or check, six yards of brown drilling, six yards of black cambric, twelve yards of Irish linen, and one table service. I 8. This is an undated novice manual, probably used in the mid-nineteenth century. It was thought to be translated from a French manual the sisters brought with them (ACSJC-AP). The CSJs wrote their first American customs book in 1868, and it was revised and expanded in 19 I 7. In 1700 a spiritual directory was added to the prescriptive literature. All printed constitutions contained specific requirements for behavior and religious practices as well as guidelines concerning interactions among sisters and with seculars. 19. Sr. Winifred (Kate) Hogan, "My Reminiscences," 1922, part 2, p. 14, ACSJCSPP. 20. O'Brien, Likes ofKitfy O'Brien, 49. 2 I . Interview of Sr. Aloysia Joseph McCarthy (entered I 901) by Susan Marie O'Connor, March 4, I 97 j, Latham, N.Y., ACSJC-AP. 22. Sr. Cecilia Marie Hurley (entered I 7 I 7), "Reflections," October I , I 78 I , ACSJCAP. 2 j. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1769), 44- j j, 94-1 1 I , 147-60. Arnold Van Gennep's work is taken from his Rztes ofPassage (London: Routledge and I<egan Paul, 1909). 24. Postulant and Novitiate Records, ACSJC-SLP. For examples from other orders see Fitzgerald, "Irish-Catholic Nuns," 2 30-3 r For an interesting discussion on the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary formation see Mary Ann Hinsdale, "The Roughest Kind of Prose: IHM Socialization, I 860 - I 960," in Building Sisterhood: A Feminist Histor_y ofthe Sisters, Servants qf the Immaculate Heart ofMay (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1777), 1 17 - j 0. 2 j. Kathryn Kish Sklar, Flarence Kelb and the Nation's Work: The Rise of' Women'sPolitical Culture, 1830-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 199j), 186-92, and "Hull House in the I 870s: A Community of Women Reformers," Signs 10 (Summer 198j): I I o; Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds o f Womanhood: "Woman's.@here" in New England, 1780-189 (New Haven: Yale University Press, I 777), I 26 - j 7; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorder& Conduct: Visions ofGender in WctorianAmerica (New York: Oxford University Press, I 78 I), 2 j4; Higginbotham, R&hteous Discontent. 26. Sklar, "Hull House," I lo. 27. Canon law required a minimum of one year in the novitiate. Depending on how soon the novices were needed in the workforce, the second year of the novitiate was usually less structured since they often were living and working with professed sisters outside the novitiate and away from the motherhouse. 2 8. Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Cbnduct, 6 j . 29. Memoirs of Sr. Rose Edward Dailey (entered 1916) in Purcell,~nbilarse,45. 30. For examples in a variety of settings see Estelle Freedman, "Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, I 870 - I 730," IGminist Studies j (Fall I 977): 5 12 - 29; Blanche Wieson Cook, "Female Support Networks and Political Activism," in A Heritage ofHer Own: Toward a New Jbcial Histoy ofAmemGan Women, ed. Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), 42 j - 24; Sklar, "Hull House," I I o - I I ;Janice G. Raymond, A Passionfor Friends:

Notes to Pages 74-78

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Taward a Philosop& ofFernale Affection (Boston: Beacon Press, 1786), 82; Carol I, 1 j 8; and Lynn Gordon, Gender and H$er Education in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920 (New Haven: Yale University Press, I 770)~41. 3 1. Raymond, Passionfor Friends, 70. This quote is taken from a chapter devoted to friendship in convents, titled "Varieties of Female Friendship: The Nun as Loose Woman," 73-1 12. 32. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America," Signs I (Autumn I 97 j): 1 - 27. Smith-Rosenberg's article redefined and expanded the discussion of women's love and friendship by placing it within the context of gender relationships in nineteenthcentury America. See also Lillian Faderman, Surpassitg the Love qMen: Romantic Friend ship and Love between Women from the Renaissance to the Pre~ent(New York: William Morrow and Co., I 78 I). 33. Discussions of this issue are very brief in the CSJ prescriptive literature. Prohibitions against "particular friendships" were usually included in the section on the vow of chastity and placed amid warnings on intimacies with the opposite sex. CSJ Constitution (I 86o), 42, (I 884), 17, and the CSJ Customs Book (1917), 54. See also Fitzgerald, "Irish-Catholic Nuns," 226- 27, and Raymond, Passionjbr Friends, 91 -78. For Catholic theological discussions on female friendship and relationships see Mary E. Hunt, Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology ofFriendshg (New York: Crossroad, 1772), and Thomas C. Fox, Sexual$y and Catholicicm (New York: Geo. Braziller, Inc., '774). 34. Letter from Mother Elizabeth Parrott to Sr. Cecelia O'Grady, September 22, I 707, ACSJC-LAP. 3j. Lillian Faderman has argued that romantic friendships between women remained possible for the first two decades of the twentieth century, particularly for women born into "Victorian households." When Americans began reading the work of Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis, attitudes began to change and women in particular were seen as more sexual beings. A "companionate marriage," which advocated friendship andsex within heterosexual marriage became the only accepted norm, and consequently same-sex friendships came under suspicion. The same-sex bonding so typical of the nineteenth century was no longer seen as "natural" but as potentially pathological. See Faderman, Surpassing the Love ofMen, 278, and Christina Simmons, "Companionate Marriage and the Lesbian Threat," in Women and Power in American Hirtoy: A Reader, vol. 2, ed. Kathryn IGsh Sklar and Thomas Dublin (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hd,I 99 I), I 8 3 -94. 36. Correspondence between sisters, obituaries, necrologies, and community histories written in the early part of the twentieth century or earlier use the terms "dear companion" or "life-long friend or companion" to designate special friendships between sisters. The point here is not to try to define what these words meant but to point out that nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century writers felt comfortable noting these close friendships, unlike women born later in the twentieth century who had been socialized to view women's friendships with suspicion. For an interesting dis-

2j0

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Notes to Pages 78-79

cussion on this issue within the IHM community see Joan Glisky, "The Official IHM Stance on Friendship, I 845 -1960," I J 3 -72, and Nancy Sylvester, "PFs: Persistent Friendships," I 7 3 -92, in BaiMing Sisterhood. 37. Ewens, Role ofthe Nun, 108-1 5 , and McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 627. This was less of a problem for the CSJs than other communities such as the Carmelites, Dominicans, School Sisters of Notre Dame, Religious of the Sacred Heart, and the Visitandines, but all communities of women religious struggled with the balancing act between religious activities and public work in the United States (Ewens, "Leadership of Nuns," I I 3 - I 6). As the demands of professionalization and time commitments increased in the twentieth century, the dissonance between religious practices and the demands of public work increased for all communities of nuns. j 8. Mary Ewens, "Women in the Convent:' in AmmZan Catholic Women:A n Historical Eqloration, ed. Karen J. Kennelly (New York: Macmillan, I 9891, 37. 39. The "Chapter of Faults" is described in the CSJ Constitution (I 86o), 70, (I 884), 5 2 - j 5. The French constitution and its English version (I 847) as well as the later American versions stipulated the use of a "monitor" or, as it was later called, "admonitrix." The monitor's role was to "admonish the Superior of her faults, and to receive such complaints as may be made against her." CSJ Constitution (I 847), 6 3 -64. 40. See McDanneLlS discussion of "Catholic domesticity," in her book The Christian Home in VictorianAmerica, 1840-1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, I 986), 5 2 - 76. See also Karen Kennelly, "Ideas of American Catholic Womanhood," in Kmnelly, American Catholic Women, 1-16; James J. Kennedy, "Eve, Mary, and the Historians," in Women in American Religion, ed. Janet Wilson James (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980), 191-206; David G. Hacken, "Gender and Religion in American Culture, I 870- 19j0," Rehgion andAmerican Culture j, no. z (Summer I 99 5): I 27- J 7; and Joseph G. Mannard, "Maternity. . .of the Spirit: Nuns and Domesticity in Antebellum America," US. CatholicHiFtorian 5 (Summer I 986): 301-24. 41. For examples of Catholic prescriptive literature for girls and women during the late nineteenth century see George Deshon, Guide for Catholic Yowig Women (New York: The Catholic Publication House, I 871); Orestes A. Brownson, "The Woman Question," in The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, ed. Henry F. Brownson (Detroit: T. Nourse, I 882 - 8 I), I 8:3 81-97; William Stang, Son'alism and Chn'stianig (New York: Benziger, I 90 >),I 78- 8 3 ;and Bernard O'Reilly, Mirror af Trzle Womanhood (New York: I? J. Kenedy, 1892). For a gender comparison see O'Reilly's earlier book for men entitled TmeMenAs We Need Them (New York: P. J. Kenedy, I 878). 42. "Maxims of Perfection," CSJ Constitution (I 884), I 29 -46. There are ninetyeight Maxims of Perfection in this version of the constitution. More than twenty discuss the need for self-effacement and humility and nine deal with self-sacrifice. Humility is discussed so extensively in all the prescriptive documents that it is almost a de facto fourth vow. 43. Patricia Byrne, "Sisters of St. Joseph: The Americanization of a French Tradition," US. CatholicHistorian (Surnmer/Fall 1986): 263. 44. Much of what we know about these events is gleaned from sisters' correspondence with the motherhouse. At times superiors did request sisters to keep a journal. Sr. Monica Corrigan was one of those asked to do so. Her journal documented the

Notes to Pages 79-81

I

z5 I

journey she and her companions made to Tucson in I 870. Fortunately for us, Corrigan became interested in community history and began collecting memoirs in I 890 for a CSJ history. Although Corrigan never completed her CSJ history, Sr. Lucida Savage, a Ph.D. historian, utilized some of her collected materials and acquired more for her book The Congregation ofSt.Joseph ofcarondelet: A RriefAccoclnt of Its Origin and Its Work in the Unitedstates, 1610-1922 (St. Louis: Herder Book Co., 1923). 4j. Although there are some recent exceptions that have been cited in this book, the vast majority of Catholic national, diocesan, or local parish histories have been written with great reverence for bishops and local priests with scant mention of the sisters. We are not attempting to devalue the contributions of these male clerics, but the invisibility and lack of recognition of the sisters' work are astoundtng, particularly since nuns were present in far larger numbers than either priests or orders of religious men. 46. "Maxims of Perfection," Nos. 2 3 and 25, CSJ Constitution (I 884), r 33. 47. What we are referring to is the ideology of "maternal feminism" as defined and described by some historians of women. This is the idea that women could utilize their power as mothers to actively take on abuses of patriarchy and at times of capitalism in defense of their concern for children, not necessarily their own self-interest. See Lnda Gordon, "Putting Children First: Women, Maternalism, and Welfare in the Early Twentieth Century," in U S . Hirtoty as Women'sHistoty: New Feminist Essqr, ed. Linda I.For discussion on the common schools and for a variety of interpretations on their purposes and effectiveness see Lawrence A. Cremin, TheAmerican Common School: A n Historic Conception (New York: Teachers College Press, I 91 I); Carl F. Kaestle, PilLars ofthe Republic: Common Schools andAmerican Sociep, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, I 98 3); Michael B. Katz, The I r o ofEar4 ~ School Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968); and Spring, American School, 62 - 96. 6. Spring, American School, 63. Although larger national purposes were important to the creation of common schools, it is important to remember that the US. Constitution says nothing about education. All authority to create schools had been given to the states and the local communities. This is why (to the present day) there is so much variability in financing, curriculum, etc., from state to state and from one public school district to another. 7. "To the Honorable the Board of Aldermen of the City of New York" in Catholic Education in Americn: A Documenta~Histoty, ed. Neil McCluskey (New York: Teachers College Press, 1964),72. The most widely read textbooks of the nineteenth century, the McGuffiy Readers, were notorious in the early editions for their anti-Catholic text and caricatures of the pope. Between r 836 and 1920, I 2 0 million textbooks were sold. 8. Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 269 - 70. For additional analysis of the public school versus Catholic school controversy and the evolution of the Catholic school system see James A. Burns, The Catholic School $stem in the United States: Its Principles, Origin, and Establishment (New York: Benziger Bros., 1908) and The Growth undIleuelopment ofthe Catholic School $stem in the IJnited States (New York: Renziger Bros., I 9 I 2). For more current analyses that incorporate discussions on race, ethnicity, class, and, to a lesser extent, gender, see Michael F. Perko, ed., Enlightening the Next Generation: Catholics and Their Schools, 1830-1980 (New York: Garland Press, I 988), and Walch, Parish School. 9. Peter Guilday, A Hirtog~ofthe Councils ofBaltimore, 1791-1884 (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 237- 39; Buetow, OfSin&arBenefit, 148- j o; Marvin Lazerson, "Understanding American Catholic Educational History,'' in Perko, Enlitening the Next Generation, 297 - 3 5 3. I o. Guilday, H i r t o ~ ofthe Counrdr, 23 8 - 39; Spring, American School, 84- 86; Dolan, American Catholic E~perience, 27 I - 77; Buetow, Of Singular Benefit, I 46 - j 4; Philip Gleason, "Baltimore 111 and Education," in Perko, Enlightening the Next Genrration, 581 -417. In I 87 5 American bishops received a strong message of support for Catholic schools from Rome. See "Instruction of the Congregation of Propaganda de Fide Concerning Catholic Children Attending American Public Schools, November 24, I 87 5 :' in Documents of'American Gtholic Histoy, ed. John Tracy Ellis (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 19j6), 416- 20. I I . Joel Perlman, Ethnic D$erences: Schooling and .Yocial.Ytructure among the Irish, Italians, Jws, and Blacks in an American CZJ 1880-1931 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 64, and Dolan, American Catholic Exprrience, 277. Mary Jo Weaver has called the parochial schools "one of the most amazing building and educational programs in the history of the world." Sec Weaver, Neui Catholic Women:A Cbntinuous Challenge to Zka-

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Notes to Pages I 30- 3 I

ditional ReligiolsAuthori~(San Francisco: Harper and Row, I 98 j), 27, Leslie Woodcock Tender has echoed these sentiments in "On the Margins: The State of American Catholic History," American Quarter4 45, no. I (March I 993): 107-9. I 2. Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 27 I ; Buetow, Of Singubr Benefit, I 5 9 - 6 I ; Walch, Parish School, 69 -7 I , 88 - 90. The "Poughkeepsie Plan" and others in the state of New York were officially terminated by the New York state legislature in 1898. I 3. M. Aida Doyle, Histo9 ofthe Sicters ofSt.Joseph o f Carondelet in the T r y Province (Albany: Argus Press, I 936), I 67 -70; Mary Ancilla Leary, The Histoy o f Catholic Edncation in the Diocese ofAlban_y (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 19j7), 61-64. 14. The Stillwater arrangement ended in I 892, and Faribault ended one year later. Ireland evoked strong sentiment from Protestants and some Catholics, particularly German Catholics who feared that the German language and culture would be lost if Catholics did not have separate schools. Many bishops disagreed strongly with Ireland's ideas on Americanization, and his speech to the National Education Association in I 890, in which he advocated state-supported church schools, had created a storm of controversy. See Dolan, American CatholiC Experience, 274-76; James M . Reardon, The Catholic Church in the Diocese ofSt. Paul (St. Paul: North Central Pub., 19j2), 290-303; La Vern J. Rippley, "Archbishop Ireland and the School Language Controversy," in Perko, Enlightening the Next Generation, 38 - j 3; Thomas T. McAvoy, A Hirtov ofthe Catholic Church in the United States (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 296-99; and Timothy H. Morrissey, "Archbishop John Ireland and the Faribault-Stillwater School Plan of the I 890s: A Reappraisal" (Ph.D. diss., LJniversity of Notre Dame, 197 1). I 5. Reardon, Chtholic Church, 292 -94. The quote is cited in Reardon, and he states it is taken from a letter from Ireland to Cardinal Gibbons, October 17, I 891. 16. Helen Angela Hurley, On Good Ground The St09 ofthe Sisters ofSt.Joseph in St. Paul (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, I 9 j I), 21 o - I j . I 7. Ibid., 2 I j. Florence Deacon reports that in Wisconsin nuns taught in the public schools, particularly rural schools, without such difficulties. See her "Handmaids or Autonomous Women: The Charitable Activities, Institution Building and Communal Relationships of Catholic Sisters in Nineteenth-Century Wisconsin" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, I 989), I 5 3 -87. However, many states enacted "anti-garb laws" to keep nuns out of public school classrooms, which effectively kept sisters from obtaining teacher certification in many states. For a legal analysis of the antigarb issue in North Dakota and the School Sisters of Notre Dame see Linda Grathwohl, "The North Dakota Anti-Garb Law: Constitutional Conflict and Religious Strife," Great Plains Quarter4 I 3, no. 1 (Summer I 993): I 87 - 2 0 2 . 18. Official Catholic Direct09 (New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1920), I O I I . As with all national Catholic statistics and directories, there are some inconsistencies, although most historians agree within a few percentage points on school and population data. The other difficulty with school data is that parish and private academies or select schools were often lumped together, changmg the total number of schools. For additional discussion and demographic detail see Buetow, OfSingdar Beneft, 179; Dolan, American Cbtholic Experience, 27 5 -76; and Gerald Shaughnessy, Has the Immigrant Kept

Notes to Pages I 32-34

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the Faith?A Study of Immigration and Catholic Growth in the United States, 1790-zpo (New York: M a c d a n , 192 5 ). 19. George C. Stewart, Marvels of Char$: Histoy ofAmerican Sisters andNzrns (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., I 9 9 4 , 3 22, > 64. 20. "CSJ General Chapter Report, I 920," ACSJC-G. 2 I. Srs. Celestine Pommerel and St. John Fournier were chosen to be a part of the original group of sisters sent to the United States, but they spent a year in special training before coming to St. Louis in I 837. In the early nineteenth century the French were considered leaders in deaf education, so the two sisters probably received some of the best training available at the time. Dolorita Maria Dougherty et al., eds., The Sirters ofSt. Joseph ofcarondelet (St. Louis: Herder Book Co., 1966), 120-22, 344-47. Although the large institute for the deaf in Buffalo became diocesan after the formation of general government, its earliest teachers came from St. Louis. Other CSJ communities that have worked with the deaf include those in Philadelphia, Boston, Rutland, Vt., and Brentwood, Brooklyn, and Queens, N.Y. See Sr. Rose Gertrude, "The Education of the Deaf in America by Sisters of St. Joseph" (unpublished manuscript, November I 9 j 8, ACSJC-SIP). 22. Letter from A. J. Meyer to Rev. Mother Agatha Guthrie, November 24, I 888, ACSJC-LAP. After 1920 and as parish elementary and high schools continued to increase, the CSJ academies that survived typically remained as private secondary schools for girls only-separate from the parish schools and funded by the CSJs and through tuition. 23. Letter from Sr. Flavia Waldron to Sr. Charles Brennan, October 6, 1898, ACSJC-AP. See also Doyle, Histoy ofthe Sisters, j7-62, and Emily Joseph Daly, "The Albany Province," in Dougherty et al., Sisters ofst. Ioseph, 222-24. For information about working-class Catholic families in Cohoes and Troy, N.Y., see Daniel J. Walkowitz, "Working-Class Culture in the Gilded Age: The Iron Workers of Troy, New York, and the Cotton Workers of Cohoes, New York-I 8 j j - I 884" (Ph.D. dm., University of Rochester, 197 2). 24. Tyack and Hansot, Learning Together, 78 - 80. Tyack and Hansot argue that this was often a reflection of class bias. Middle-class and upper-class parents did not want their daughters mixing with working-class males. 25. Letter from Fr. A. J. Meyer to Rev. Mother Agatha Guthrie, November 24, I 888, ACSJC-LAP. 26. Ignatius Loyola Cox, "The Mission at St. Anthony Falls, or East Minneapolis," Acta et Dicta 3, no. 2 (July 1914): 289. 27. "Report to the General Chapter-Troy Province 1920" and John F. Glavin, "Diamond Jubilee History-Albany Diocese I 847- I 922," ACSJC-AP. The high numbers in the first and second grade mirror attendance patterns in public schools. 28. Letter from Fr. J. J. Donnelly to Rev. Mother Agnes Gonzaga Ryan, January I 2, 1906, ACSJC-SLP. There are other letters from Donnelly dating to 1916 expressing concern about the need for more teachers in the fast-growing parish. In a letter dated May 26, I 9 I 5 , Donnelly stated that there were seventy children each in the first and second grade classes (ACSJC-SLP).

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Notes to Pages 134-37

27. Letter from Fr. J. B. McNally to Rev. Mother Agatha Guthrie, July 28, 1881, ACSJC-SLP. 30. Although the manual was decades, if not a century old, the version of the manual that the original CSJs brought from France had been most recently published in I 8 3 2 in Lyons. 3 I. The SchoolManualjirthe IJse ofthe Sisters $St. Joseph of Carondelet (St. Louis: Carreras Pub. Co., I 884), revised I 71o, ACSJC-SLP. See Mary Lucida Savage, The Cbngregation of.Yt.Jostpb of Carondelek A BriefAccount@Its Orign andIts Work in the United States, 16~0-1922(St. Louis: Herder Book Co., 1923), 94-76, and Dougherty et al., Sisters ofst. loseph, 218-17. 32. For discussions on the widespread use and high quality of the CSJ school manual see Buetow, Of Singular Benefit, 191-92, and Susan Carol Peterson and Courtney Ann Vaughn-Roberson, Women with Wsion: The Presentation Sisters of South Dakota, 1880-198~ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 78-79. Many of the larger teaching orders, female and male, that originated in Europe had teaching guides. 3 3. CSJ SchoolManual (I 884), introduction. 34. Ibid., I 3 -16, and CSJSchoolManLlal(~g~o), 16- 19. We wish to thank Dr. Laura Sloan of the Education Department at Avila College for her helpful analysis and comments on the manuals. 3 5 Catholic Child'! Letter Wrier (St. Louis: Carreras Pub., I 886) incorporates geography and history to teach writing for grades I - 8; Child's Geograph_yand Hirtoly ofSt. Louis CiQ (St. Louis: Carreras Pub., I 886) includes a teacher's edition for grades 3 -4; and Language Manualincorporates language, letter writing, and arithmetic for grades I - 3 (St. Louis: Carreras Pub., I 890). All books are located in the ACSJC-SLP. Unfortunately we do not know the author(s) because in each case the books were "Compiled by the Sisters of St. Joseph." It would be impossible to discern whether they were indeed a group effort or whether humility and avoiding singularity kept the author from stating her name. 36. Timothy Walch, "Catholic School Books and American Values: The NineteenthCentury Experience," in Perko, Enlightening the Next Generation, 267-76. Some of the most popular Catholic textbooks were published by the Christian Brothers, Sadlier, and Benziger Brothers. 37. Dolan,American Cathoh Eqerience, 276. For a more extensive discussion on the importance and prevalence of ethnic parishes and the varieties of Catholic immigrant experiences see Walch, Parish School, 76- 82; Jay I? Dolan, ed., The AmeriGan Catholic Parish:A Hictolyfrom 18jo to the Present, 2 vols. (New York: Paulist Press, I 987), and The Immigrant Church: New Yarki Irish and German Catholics, 181j-1861 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975; reprint, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1783);Jay P. Dolan and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, eds., Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church, 1900-196) (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974); Stephen Shaw, The Catholic Pa& as a W q Station ofEthnici0 andilmericani~ation(New York: Carlsen Publishing Co., 1791); David O'Brien, Public Catholicism (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 34-61; and Michael Perko, "Catholics and Their Culturist Perspective," in Perko, Enlz$tening the Next Generation, 3 I I - I 6. For additional information on the importance of ethnic, religious, and cultural networks that includes dis-

Notes to Pages I 37-40

( 273

cussions on immigrant Catholics see Stanley Nadel, Little Germany: Ethnido, Religion, and Class in New York Cig, 184)-1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970); Robert A. Slayton, Back ofthe Yards: The Making ofa Local Democrag (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, I 786); Virginia Yans-McLaughlin,FamiCj and Communig: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, 1880-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978);and Kathleen Neils Conzen, 1mm;SrantMilwaukee, 1836-1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 7976). 38. German Lutherans, particularly those affiliated with the Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod believed that to achieve reine Lehre (pure doctrine) children had to be taught the Lutheran faith in the language of Martin Luther. In the nineteenth century, they established the largest parochial school system of all Protestant denominations. Two sources provide extensive information about these schools: Walter H. Beck, Lutheran Elementaq Schools in the United States (St. Louis: Concordia Pub., I 939), and August C. Stellhorn, Schools ofthe Lutheran Church-Mzssouri $nod (St. Louis: Concords Pub., 1963). 3 7. Hasia R. Diner, Erin's Daughters in America: Irirh Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Centuy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, I 98 3), 76 -99. School teaching was a popular occupational choice for young Irish women on the Eastern seaboard, and they filled the ranks of urban public schools. Diner states that "school teaching for the second generation was what domestic service had been for the first" (97). 40. Dolan, American Catholic Eqerience, 276 - 84. 41. Quoted in Mary J. Oates, The Catholic Pbilantbropic Tradition in America (Bloomingon: Indiana University Press, 199 j), 1 j 3. Oates also states that by the mid-I 920s many of the 798 sisters teaching African American children came from Mother Katherine Drexel's order, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. This order focused its work on Native Americans and African Americans. A CSJ diocesan order that came from Le Puy to Florida and eventually Georgia was also heavily invested in the education of African Americans. Called the "nigger sisters" by local whites, the Florida community remained diocesan, but the Georgia group eventually affiliated with the CSJs of Carondelet in 1922. For more information on African American Catholic experience see Cyprian Davis, The Hirtoy ofBlack Catholics in the United States (New York: Crossroad, I 99 j) and "African-American Catholics and Their Church," L!S. C'atholicHistorian (special issue) I 2, no. I (Winter 1994). 42. Dolan, American Clztholic Experience, 282-83. Dolan states that in rural areas with fewer than 2,joo people, it took an average of fourteen years to b d d a school. In small towns of 2,joo to 10,000 people it took an average of eleven years for the parish to create a school. In cities with a population over jo,ooo a school was built within five years of the founding of a new parish. 43. For specific CSJ demographic data see Chapter 3. By the late nineteenth century, the CSJs still had a number of sisters who were bilingual, speaking fluent French, Spanish, or German as well as English. Although they probably did not have enough German- and Spanish-speaktng sisters to meet the needs of various ethnic groups, they continued to staff bilingual schools for French Canadian, German, and Hispanic populations.

44. Margaret Susan Thompson, "Sisterhood and Power: Class, Culture and Eth-

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Notes to Pages 140-41

nicity in the American Convent," Colb Library Quarter4 2 j , no. 3 (September I 989): 149 -7 j ;Dolan, American Catholic Ex;t,erience,241 - 8 I . For additional reading on the significance of ethnic and linguistic differences among American Catholics see note 37, above, and Colman J. Barry, The Catholic Church and German Americans (Mlwaukee: Bruce Pub., I 9 j 3); Diner, Erin's Daaghter.~in ,Imerica; Robert A. Orsi, The Madonna oJ rrph Xtreet: Faith and Communig in Italian Harlem, 1180-rplo (New Haven: Yale University Press, I 98 1); and John J. Bukowczyk,AndMy Children Did Not Knoz~aMe: A his tog^ ofthe Polish-Americans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, I 987). 4 j . Hurley, On Good Ground, I 8 - 20, 149 - j 0, I 69 -70; Annabelle Raiche and An11 Marie Biermaier, Thg Came to Teach: The J'tar~,ofSirters Who Taught in Parochial Schools and Their Contribution to Elementary Edacation in Minnesota (St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 1994), 73 -74. The two German schools in St. Paul and Hastings were eventually staffed by two German orders, School Sisters of Notre Dame and Benedictines when the CSJs could not continue to supply enough Germanspeaking sisters. 46. Interview of Sr. Ailbe 071<ellyby Sr. Susan Marie O'Connor, Syracuse, N.Y., January 2 3, I 98 I , ACSJC-AP. 47. "Florence, Arizona, I 88 3 - I 889" and "List of Sisters of St. Joseph from Early Mexican Families," ACSJC-LAP. Six young women, Mexican-born or first-generation American-born, entered the Western province when it was located in Tucson in the late I 870s. Ann Cecilia Smith's interview with Sr. Serena McCarthy about her experiences at St. Augustine's in I 898 is cited in Ann Cecilia Smith, "Educational Activities of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in the Western Province from I 870 to I 903" (master's thesis, Catholic University, I 9 j j), 3 j - 36. 48. "Notes on St. Mary's School-Oswego, N.Y.," ACSJC-AP; Doyle, Hirtor~,afthe Sisters, 4 j - j 5 . 49. Dougherty et al., SiFters ofst.joseph, I I j, I 77. Eventually, ethnic rivalries divided some of these groups into separate parishes in Hancock. The French and Germans stayed together and the Italians and Irish each had their own parish. jo. "History of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in the Diocese of Mobile," ACSJC-SLP; Lucida Savage, The Century's Harvest, 1836-1936 (St. Louis: Herder Book Co., 1936), > 2 . j I . "Notes on St. Patrick's Parish-Los Angeles," ACSJC-LAP. j 2. Leary's Hirtoly ofCatholic Education examines each educational institution in the diocese of Albany (which originally included Syracuse and other parts of upstate New York), and in almost every case lay teachers had been the forerunners of sisterteachers in the parish schools. Even with the increase in teaching sisters, many schools hired lay teachers to serve in the larger schools because there were never enough sisters to fill all the needs of parish education, particularly since these New York parishes often offered secondary course work before parish schools in other parts of the country. 5 5. Mary J. Oates, "Organized Voluntarism: The Catholic Sisters in Massachusetts, I 870 -1 940," in Women in American Religion, ed. Janet Wilson James (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980), 1 j4- j 9; Dolan, American CatholicExperzence,289; Raiche and Biermaier, the^ Came to Teach, I o j .

Notes to Pages 142-44

1

27 5

54. Historians of education have extensively researched this transition from male to female teachers in the United States. For more discussion on this phenomenon see Tyack and Hansot, Learning %ether; Spring, American Schook Kaestle, Pillars ofthe Republic; Nancy Hoffman, Woman's "Tme" Profession: Voicesfrom the his to^ o f Teaching (Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, I 98 I); and Polly Welts Kaufman, Women Eachers on the Frontier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). j j . Oates, "Organized Voluntarism," I j 4 - j 6; Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 289. Oates has made a very careful study of sisters' salaries and compared them to those of female public school teachers and to the cost of living expenses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 5 6. Burns, Grolvth and Deuelopmerrt, 2 3, I oo, 28 2. j 7. "Silver Jubilee" program for St. Mary's Parish, St. Paul, Minn., ACSJC-SPP. The nuns may have earned even less since their salaries were recorded for 1898 and the Brothers' salaries were recorded from I 876. j 8. "The Institute Journal," Amsterdam, N.Y., I 889 -90, ACSJC-AP. j9. Financial Report (191 4) from St. Vincent's Convent, Los Angeles, ACSJC-LAP. 60. Memoirs of Sr. Rose Edward Dailey in Jabilarse, ed. Margaret John Purcell (St. Louis: Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, 198I), 4 j . 61. "Statement of Account-St. John's Parish, Kansas City, Mo.," June I 882-Dec. 1904, ACSJC-SLP. The CSJs came to the parish in I 887 to open the school and stayed until 193j. 62. Letter from Fr. J. B. McNally to Rev. Mother Agatha Guthrie, July 26, 1883, ACSJ C-TAP. 63. Account statement and itemization of the St. Mary's Academy Convent, Hoosick Falls, N.Y., ACSJC-AP. The CSJ contribution included everything from carpet to window fixtures and the appliances for the laundry and the kitchen. 64. "Ascension [Parish] Builds a House [for Sister-Teachers]," n.d., ACSJC-SPP. 6 j . Interview of Sr. Lboria Wendling by Sr. St. Henry Palmer, July I 964, in Tucson, Arizona, ACSJC-LAP. 66. Mary Ewens, The Role ofthe Nan in Nineteenth-CentavAmerica (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 68,98, 21 j. 67. Letter to the Rev. Andrew Duplang from the "Sisters of St. Joseph," June 2, I 91 I , ACSJC-AP. Although only the Duplang letter survives, it was sent to all "Reverend Pastors" in the Albany and Syracuse dioceses. The letter probably came from Mother Odilia Bogan, the provincial superior. The CSJs in the other three provinces did not close their academies, so when the Troy province closed these schools in I 8 83, the order probably came from the bishop. James Hennesey states that in I 88 3 in a preliminary meeting, American bishops created the agenda for the 1884 Baltimore Council that mandated parish schools. Therefore, the timing of the change is probably not coincidental since bishops certainly understood the upcoming need for more parish teachers. Closing the select academies freed up sisters to staff parish schools (American Catholics, I 82). 68. Thomas J. Noel, Colorado Catholicism and the Archdiocese o f Denver, 1x17-19x9 (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1989), 362-64. A series of articles on the feud can be found in the Denver Republican beginning May I 909 and appearing for a

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Notes to Pages 144-49

year, until the civil court case was completed. Carrigan had friends in the press and city hall, but Matz prevailed and reassigned h m to Glenwood Springs in I 91o. Fr. Carrigan was appointed to St. Patrick's by French-born bishop Machebeuf, but he was greatly disappointed when in I 889 French-born Matz was appointed at Machebeuf S death. Carrigan had hoped for an Irish bishop, and he proceeded to challenge Matz and criticize him in the diocese. 69. The letters and telegrams were sent from May to August 1909 (ACSJC-SLP). Matz communicated only with the motherhouse in St. Louis. He sent a representative to talk with the local sisters at St. Patrick's. Sr. Marguerite Murphy was superior of the Denver convent, and she wrote the motherhouse continuously about how the sisters were put in untenable situations. Coming close to blows on several occasions, Fr. Carrigan and the bishop's representative, Fr. Donovan, battled over who would hear the sisters' confessions, who would provide the "Blessed Sacrament," and who would have coffee and breakfast in the morning with the sisters. Carrigan labeled Sr. Marguerite "hysterical" in a June 4, 1909, telegram to St. Louis, and Matz sent a telegram on June I I , I 909, advising the Reverend Mother to tell her Denver sisters to "mind their own business and not waste their sympathies upon a suspended and excommunicated priest." If they do this, he continued, "they will have nothing to fear [from him] ." 70. Letter from Rev. Mother Agnes Gonzaga Ryan to Bishop Matz, June I 8, 1912, ACSJ C-SLP. 7 I . Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin, introduction to Women and Power in '4merican History: A Reader, vol. 2, ed. Sklar and Dublin (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1991), 2. 72. Once again, the fact that the CSJs had papal approbation and were not a diocesan community ruled by the bishop gave them an additional buffer against his demands. This chronic problem of male interference may be the most common one experienced across all orders of women religious. For examples similar to the CSJ experience see M. Georgia Costin, Inriceless .Firit: A History ofthe Sifters ofthe Holy Cross, 1841-1893 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994); Mary Roger Madden, The Path Marked Out: History oftbe S'ters o f Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods, vol. 3 (Terre Haute, Ind.: Sisters of Providence, 1991); Stewart, Marvels ofCbarity; and Ewens, Role ofthe Nzm. For an interesting cross-cultural comparison of gender politics in the church see Anne McLay, Women out o f Their .Sphere: A Hirtov of the SiFters ofMerc_y in Western Australia (Western Australia: LTanguard Press, 1992). 73. Hoffman, Woman's "Tme" Profession, 210- I I . For additional analysis on the s h f t to a bureaucratic, business model for schools see Michael Katz, Class, Bureaucray, and Schools (New York: Rhinehart and Winston, I 97 j), and David B. Tyack, The One Best $stem: A Hirtoy ofAmerican Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1974). 74. Guilday, Histoy ofthe Councils, 2 39. 7 j . For a chronological analysis of this transition and the similarities of Catholic and public schools see Lazerson, "Understanding American Catholic Educational History," 340- 50. Lazerson states that it took decades for the transition to reach all

Notes to Pages 149- yo ( 277

Catholic parishes and that the larger cities were advantaged because they had many lay Catholics who were involved in the standardization of the public schools as well. 76. Hennesey, American Catholics, 210; Leary, History o f Catholic Education, 3I j - I 7; Lazerson, "Understanding American Catholic History," 348- jo; Buetow, Of Singurbr Benefit, I 80- 84;John F. Murphy, "Professional Preparation of Catholic Teachers in the Nineteen Hundreds:' in Perko, Enlightening the Next Generation, 243 - r, j. 77. R. G. T., "Fifty Years in Retrospect," in the Souvenir I'rogram ofthe FfttieethAnniversay Celebration, St. Ma@ Institute, Amsterdam, N. Y ,June 2 2 - 27, I 9 30. Leary, Histoy ofCatholicEducation, 40-42. Leary indicates that the state instituted the exams in 1877 ('39,336). 78. Interview of Sr. Petronilla McGowan by Sr. Susan O'Connor, January I 7,198 3, in Latham, N.Y., ACSJC-AP. Sr. Petronilla also told the story about Sr. Blanche Rooney. 79. For the vast majority of states we feel this to be true, although there are some notable exceptions. Mary Oates has documented the high quality of public school teachers compared to sister-teachers in Massachusetts. However, as she has stated, Massachusetts was always ahead of the national norm in education and therefore is the exception, not the rule. See Oates, "Organized Voluntarism," and Walch, Parish School, I 34- j j . 80. Hoffman, Woman? "True" Profession, xiv-xxi. 81. Ibid., 13, 212. 82. Katherine M. Cook, State Laws and Rplations Governing Teacher? Cert;ficates (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, rqer), 16, and P. P. Claxton, foreword to Annual Report o f the State Commissioner o f Education for 1912 -New York (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), xviii. 83. For examples from other religious orders see Oates, "Organized Voluntarism," 166, and Mary J. Oates, "'The Good Sisters': The Work and Position of Catholic Churchwomen in Boston, 1870-1940," in The American Catholic Religious Life, ed. Joseph M. White (New York: Garland Press, I 98 8), I 8 1; Deacon, "Handmaids or Autonomous Women," I 98 - 204; Weaver, iliew Catholic Women, 80; and Peterson and Vaughn-Roberson, Women with Vision, 67 - 77. 84. Memoirs of Sr. Mary Eustace Huster in PurceU,]ubilarse, 3 -4. 8 j . Raiche and Biermaier, Thq Came to Teach, 37. The orders of teaching sisters in Minnesota include CSJs, Sisters of St. Benedict, Franciscan Sisters, School Sisters of Notre Dame, and Sisters of St. Francis. 86. Bertrande Meyer, The Education ofsisters (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1941)~ 6 -7; Deacon, "Handmaids or Autonomous Women," I 87-98; Raiche and Biermaicr, Thfy Came to Teach, 63 -64; Stewart, Marvels ojChari9, 3 23 -24; Madden, Path Marked out, 558->9. 87. Raiche and Biermaier, Thq Came to Teach, 3 7 - 4 I; Sr. Winifred (Kate) Hogan, "My Reminiscences," 1922, ACSJC-SPP. 88. Savage, Congregation ofst. Joseph, I 76. 89. A C. Mason, 1,000 W q s ofr,ooo Teachers: Being a Compilation ofMethods c$lnstruction and Disa$line Practiced b_y Prominent Pubh School Teachers ofthe Countty (Chicago: S. R. Winchell, I 88 2).

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Notes to Pages I l o - 5 j

70. Meyer, Education ofsisters. This work uses a variety of archival sources from female teaching orders to elaborate on all three components of teacher preparation used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 71. For one of the best primary sources on the early years of the Sisters' College summer institute and degree programs see the Catholic EducationalReview (I 7 1 1- 20). Thomas E. Shields of Catholic University began the journal in January I 71 I , and as an avid proponent of Sisters' College he provided extensive coverage of its early years. A good overview of the college after eight years can be found in Shields, "The Need of the Catholic Sisters' College and the Scope of Its Work," Catholic Educational Review 17 (September I 919): 420-27. See also Murphy, "Professional Preparation," 248 - 5 3, and Philip Gleason, Contending with Modernig: Catholic Higher Education in the Twntieth Centuly (New York: Oxford University Press, I 79)). 88 - 87. 72. Since dl-male Catholic colleges would not admit women, even women religious, sisters typically attended the closest state institution that had an education program. According to Meyer, Education ofSisten-,the Paulist Fathers inaugurated a Sisters' Institute in New York City in I 87 j and Catholic University began an Institute of Pedagogy in New York in 1902. Eventually other colleges, such as the University of Chicago, St. Louis University, and Marquette University, established a Saturday, 4-6 P.M., session and a full summer session, designed to take advantage of times when few male students were on campus (I 6 - I 7). 73. Interview of Sr. Letitia Lirette by Sr. Patricia Kelly, March 7, 178j ,at Carondelet Convent in St. Louis, ACSJC-SLP. 74. Raiche and Biermaier, Thy Came to Each, 62. 9 5 . Letter to the Rev. Andrew Duplang from "Sisters of St. Joseph," June 2, I 7 I I . 96. Thomas J. Shahan, "The Summer School," and Patrick J. McCormick, "The Summer School and Report of the Secretary," CatholicEducationalReview 2, no. 2 (September 171I): j93 -604 and 65 8 -61. The thirty-one Sisters of St.Joseph included the Carondelet group and other CSJ communities. The Sisters of Mercy had the largest number with fifty-two and the Benedictines were second with thirty-six. Twenty-nine lay women teachers also attended. 97. An Ursuline of St. Ursula Convent, "The First Session the Summer School of the Catholic University," CatholicEducational Review 2, no. 2 (September I 7 I I): 6 j 4 - j 7, and A Sister of Holy Names, "What the First Summer School at the Catholic University of America Was to Students," Catholic Educational Review 2, no. 3 (October I 71 I): 67 3 - 8 I. The sisters wrote the essays anonymously to avoid "singularity." Their identity is still not known. 78. J. A. Burns, "A Constructive Policy for Catholic Higher Education," Catholic Educational Review I 7 (I 7 I 7): 4 j 8. 77. Raiche and Biermaier, They Came to Teach, 62 -63. 100. Deacon, "Handmaids or Autonomous Women," 197-78 This was particularly ironic in Wisconsin, where local districts were allowed to hire nuns (in habit) for public schools. I 01. "University Degrees Conferred on Sisters," Catholic Educational Review j (June 771 3): 47- jo. 102. Thomas E. Shields, "The Sisters College," Catholic EducationalReview 3, no. I

(January I 91 2): I - I 2, and "The Summer Session," Catholic EducationalReuiew 9, no. (January I 91 j): 56-42.

I

Chapter Six I . Although some female institutions were called academies and others seminaries, in reality there was very little difference between them. Both included moral and religious training, as did almost every school in the nineteenth century. Although some institutions were not affiliated with a particular Protestant denomination, they were rarely secular and espoused a "pan-Protestant" moral and religious perspective. We will use the terms "academy" and "seminary" interchangeably in this chapter. 2. Thomas Woody, A Hirtoty o f Women'sEducation in the United States, vol. r (New York: Science Press, I 929; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, I 980), 329 - 30. Woody states that the curriculum was very rudimentary and it is difficult to know if course work went beyond the three R's, industrial training, and religion. His two-volume work provides abundant detail on all aspects of women's education in the United States. For more information about these early academies see H. C. Semple, ed., The ~/ York: P. J. Kenedy, 1921); Lyman P. Powell, Ursulines in New Orleans, I ~ z J - I ~ (New Hirtoy of Education in Delaware (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1893); and W. C. Reichel, Histoy ofBethlehem Female Semina~(Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott, I 8 j 8). 3. Gerda Lerner, The Creation ofFerninis Consciousnessfromthe Middle Ages to 1870 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 209 -1 j ; Linda Kerber, Women ofthe Republic: Intellectandldeology in RevolzrtionayAmerica (New York: W. W. Norton, I 988), chs. 7 and 8, and "The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment-An American Perspective,"AmericanQuarter& 28 (Summer 1976): I 87-20); Mary Beth Norton, Libe q ' s Daughters: The Reuolutionaty Eqerience ofAmerican Women, 17~0-1800 (Boston: Little, Brown, 198o), 243 - j j. 4. Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Sttldy in American Domesticiij (New York: W. W. Norton, I 976); Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Cbmpan_y$Educated Women (New Haven: Yale University Press, 198 )), 14-42; Polly Welts Kaufman, Women Teachers on the Frontier (New Haven: Yale University Press, I 984); Nancy Hoffman, Woman's "Tme" Profession: I4icesjrom the Histoty o f Eaching (Old Westbury, N.Y.: The Feminist Press,

1981), 1-63. j. For an extensive chronological list with descriptions of some academies see Woody, Histo7 o f Women'sEducation, I : 3 29 - 96. The importance of these academies probably cannot be overstated in their ability to encourage women to expand their influence and expectations beyond the home. Some scholars have argued, quite convincingly, that the academy/serninary experience created a generation of women with the skills and confidence to participate in nineteenth-century social activism in moral reform societies and abolitionist, temperance, and women's rights movements. For example see Solomon, In the Compaq $Educated Women, I j -42; Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds o f Womanhood "Woman's 5)here" in New England, r 780- I 8 3 j (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), I o 1- 2 j ; Catherine Clinton, The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Hill and Wang, 1 9 8 4 , 40-71; and Sara

280

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Notes to Pages 160-61

Evans, Bornfor Libeq: A Histoy o f Women in America (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 70-81,93-118. 6. For a discussion of the importance of European convent schools see Lerner, Creation of Feminist Consciousness, 26 - 2 8, I 98 - 200, and Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith

P. Zinsser, A Hirtoy o f Their Own: Women in Europefrom Prehistoy to thp Present, vol. I (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), I 8 4 - 9 3 Besides the Ursulines, other communities that opened academies in the United States include Visitandines, Sisters of Charity, Dominicans, and Religious of the Sacred Heart. See Barbara Misner, H&hh Respectable andAccomplisbed Ladies: Catholic Women Rel&ious in America, 1790-I~JO(New York: Garland Press, 1988). 7. For information on these antebellum academies see Sr. M. Benedict Murphy, "Pioneer Roman Catholic Girls' Academies: Their Growth, Character, and Contribution to American Education: A Study of Roman Catholic Education for Girls from Colonial Times to the First Plenary Council of I 8 j 2" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 19) 8). For information on the state school systems and Catholic sisters' schools see Maria Alma, Standard Bearers: The Place o f Catholic Sisterhoods in the Ear4 Histoy 4 Ed~cation. . . untilrtjo (New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1928); see also Misner, H;Rhh Respectable Ladies; Mary Ewens, The Role ofthe Nun in Nineteenth-CentuyAmerica (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 3 j -68; Eileen Mary Brewer, L"\izn.rand the Education ofilmerican Catholic Women, 1860-1920 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1987); and Mary J. Oates, "Catholic Female Academies on the Frontier," US. Catholic Hirtorian 12, no. 4 (1994): 121-36. 8. For reasons discussed in Chapter j, the Eastern province (Troy, N.Y.) closed its secondary academies in I 883 and allowed them to be absorbed into the parish system

in upstate New York (Albany and later Syracuse dioceses). Many of these schools retained their academy names but functioned as parish high schools, receiving a charter under the New York Regents System. Although CSJs in the other three provinces taught in parish and diocesan high schools, they retained their private academies. 9. Whether analyzing Catholic or non-Catholic academies or public schools, studies show that girls attended in larger numbers at the secondary level. For a comparison of male and female Catholic secondary education in Antebellum America see Edmund J. Goebel, A Stud3, o f Catholic Seconday Education during the Colonial Period up to the First Plenary Council ofBal'timare, 18~2(New York: Benziger Brothers, I 93 7). Catholic directories (I 840- I gzo), as well as research done by Catholic University, verify this phenomenon. See "The Condition of Catholic Secondary Education," CatholiG Educational Review 10 (191 5 ) : 204-10. This "Report of the Advisory Board" surveyed Catholic schools and reported 5 37 secondary schools for girls educating 39,740 students, compared to 438 secondary schools for boys educating 34,798 students. According to historian Thomas Woody, grls attended in larger numbers in private secondary schools, both Catholic and non-Catholic, and public high schools showed the same disparity. By 1920 over one million girls were in public high schools compared to 800,ooo boys. For more analysis and data on public school attendance see Woody, H i r t o ~o f Womenir Edncation, I :3 4 j -46. I o. This organization sponsored hundreds of graduates from these eastern acade-

Notes to Pages 161-62

I

281

mies, and between I 848 and I 8 j 4 seminary graduates from New York and New England received teaching assignments in seventeen states, from western Pennsylvania to as far west as Oregon. For discussion on the NBPE see Kaufman, Women Teachers, j - 3 9, and Sklar, Catharine Beecher, I 8 3, 2 17. I I. Letter from Harriet Bishop in New York Evangeht, October I 3, I 8 5 3, cited in Annabelle Raiche and Ann Marie Biermaier, Thg Came to Each: The Stoy ofsisters Who Taught in Parochial Schools and Their Contribution to Elmentaty Education in Minnesota (St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 1994), 6. I 2. The quote is attributed to Fredrika Bremer, who met Catharine in Milwaukee in I 8 j I , and is cited in Sklar, Catharine Beecher, 220. I 3. Ibid., 170-72. Some of these quoted phrases and a list of convent academies in the West can be found in Catharine Beecher, A n Address to the Protestant Clergy ofthe United States (New York: Harper and Bros., I 846) and Evils Szrffered American Yomen andAmerican Children: The Causes and the Reme4 (New York: Harper and Bros., I 846). 14. Solomon, In the Compag ofEducated Women, I 7 - 22; Woody, Elictoly o f Women? Education, 1:349-62; Oates, "Catholic Female Academies," I z j -24; Murphy, "Pioneer Roman Catholic Girls' Academies," I I I . I j .Woody, Hictoly o f Women?Education, I :379; Nikola Baumgarten, "Education and Democracy in Frontier St. Louis: The Society of the Sacred Heart," Histoy ofEducation Quan'erlj 34 (Summer 1994): 171-92. I 6. Baumgarten, "Education and Democracy," I 82 - 8 3. See also Woody, Histoly o f Women?Bdncation, I :409 - 22; Solomon, In the Company o f E d u t e d Wbmen, 23; Oates, "Catholic Female Academies," I 24- 26; and Anne Firor Scott, "The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary, I 822 - I 872," Histoy ofEducation Quarter4 I 9 (Spring I 979): 3 - 2 j . 17. Memoirs of Eliza McKenney Brouillet, ACSJC-SLP. These are comprised of a series of letters written in the I 890s to Sr. Monica Corrigan to provide information for a community history. I 8. Sr. Mary Rose Marsteller was born in Virginia and educated in Baltimore; she entered the CSJ community in I 841 a t the age of thirty-one. The CSJs were extremely fortunate that she came to St. Louis and began teaching in the academy during the illness and eventual death of their first American-born and only English-speaking sister, Sr. Mary Joseph Dillon. It is probable that Marsteller entered the community after she had already begun to teach at the academy. In Brouillet's memoirs (ACSJC-SLP), she is referred to as "Miss Marsteller of Baltimore," implying that Marsteller was teaching before she became a postulant-a postulancy that was reduced to three months after Dillon's death. Mary Lucida Savage, The Congregation 4 % ]oseph ofcarondelet:A Brief Account ofIts O+ns and Its Work in the United States, 1610-1922 (St. Louis: Herder Book Co., 1923), 62, 94-96, and Catharine Frances Redmond, "The Convent School of French Origin in the United States, 1727- I 843" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1936), I 17. This dissertation also provides a good overview of curriculum and structure of the early French-based convent academies. 19. The academies all existed for different periods of time, and some states had as many as seven different academies within their borders. The secondary academies were located in Missouri, New York, California, Arizona, Alabama, Illinois, Wis-

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Notes to Pages 162-64

consin, Oklahoma, Michigan, Mmnesota, and North Dakota. Academies in Mississippi, Colorado, and Tennessee existed for only a short time and never developed much beyond the elementary grades. Georgia is not included in this list because the formerly diocesan Georgia community did not merge with the CSJs of Carondelet until the I gzos, after the time period of this study. 20. Palladium Times, September 6, I 8 5 8, Oswego, N.Y. 2 1. Baumgarten, "Education and Democracy," I 82 - 8 3; Oates, "Catholic Female Academies:' I r 3 - 2 j ; Kim Tolley, "Science for Ladies, Classics for Gentlemen: A Comparative Analysis of Scientific Subjects in the Curricula of Boys' and Girls' Secondary Schools in the United States," Histoy, ofEducationQuarterly 36, no. 2 (Summer 1996): I 29 - j 3. Tolley presents a strong argument on this issue and blames this "misinterpretation" of the importance of "ornamentals" on the unquestioned acceptance of Woody's 1929 classic, Histoy, o f Women'sEducation, I :411. 22. For comparisons of a variety of Catholic orders regarding curriculum and costs see Ewens, Role ofthe Nun, 98 - 104; Brewer, Nuns and the Edacation; Baumgarten, "Education and Democracy"; and Oates, "Catholic Female Academies." 23. Surviving catalogs and documents are from the three provinces that maintained secondary academies through I 920 Examples include "Prospectus of St. Joseph's Academy, St. Louis," I 861,Academy ofthe Sisters ofSt..Joseph ofCarondelet, I 893 and I 913, ACSJC-SLP; H. W. Wells, "Academy of Our Lady," in The Schools and the Teachers o f Earb Peoria (Peoria, Ill.: Jacquin and Co., I 900)~I 27 - 3 I , and 2. Teresa'sJunior College andAcademj Yearbook,Kansas City, I 9 I 9 - 20, ACSJC-SLP; "St. Joseph's Academy for Young Ladies, St. Paul, I 86 I ,"Annual Cataloye ofSt.Joseph'sA c a d e q St. Paul, I 87 j and I 907, Annual Catalogue o f & Ma~aret's Academy, Minneapolis, I 907, and Annual Catalogue ofSt..John'sAcadeq, Jamestown, N.D., 1909, ACSJC-SPP; and Ann& Catalogue o f St. May's Academy, Los Angeles, 1904- j, and Annual Catalogtle ofLI%Joseph's Academy, Prescott, Ariz., 1909, ACSJC-LAP. 24. Tolley, "Science for Ladies," I 29 - j j. Tolley confirms that boys' academies and colleges had increased their science offerings significantly by the late nineteenth century. For an expanded analysis of Tolley's work see her "Science Education of American Girls, 1794- 1932" (Ph.D. diss., University of California-Berkeley, 1997), and Deborah Jean Warner, "Science Education for Women in Antebellum America," IsiF 69 (March 1978): j 8-67. See also Woody, Histoy o f Women'sEducation, I: 563 -6j. His analysis of I 62 academy catalogs published between I 742 and I 87 I confirms that natural philosophy (physics), astronomy, chemistry, and botany were among the ten subjects most frequently listed in the standard curriculum. z 1. Savage, Congregation ofSt. Joseph, 9 j -96; "St. Joseph's Academy," St. Paul, I 861, ACSJC-SPP; "Prospectus of St. Joseph's Academy," Cohoes, N.Y., I 861, ACSJC-Al? 26. Woody, Hirtor_y o f Women? Education, 2:j 2-97; David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Learning Tagether:A HiFtoy OfCoedacationin American Schools (New Haven: Yale University Press, I 990). 16j - 242. Tyack and Hansot describe the "differentiating by sex" of the American public high school. Although girls outnumbered boys in coeducational high schools, gender-segregated courses produced a detrimental effect on girls' enrollment in math and science courses. Girls actually lost ground between I 890 and 1930, when boys were tracked into math and science and grls "counseled out"

Notes t o Pages 16j-66

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of these subjects in favor of a practical education (i.e., home economics and commercial courses). The curricular trends also impacted racial and ethnic minorities who were consistently channeled into vocational tracks in high schools. See also William J. Reese, The Origins ofthe Americdn High School (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 2 2 0 - 30. For discussion on how gender-segregated curricula affected women's higher education see Solomon, In the Company ofEducated Iyhmen, 82 - 87, 149- 5 6. 27. Academy ofthe Sisters ofSt. Joseph ofCarondelet, St. Louis, 1913; Wells, "Academy of Our Lady," and "St. Joseph's Academy," Green Bay, Wisc., ACSJC-SLP; St. Eresa's Junior Colltge andAcademy, Kansas City, Mo., 19I 9 - 20, Avila College Records, Kansas . Academy, Prescott, Ariz., I 91o, and Annual CatCity, Mo.; Annual Catalogue 0Joseph's alogue o f St. Mary's Academy, Los Angeles, I 904- 5, ACSJC-LAP; Annual Catalogue o f & Joseph's Academy, St. Paul, I 907 - 8, Annual Catalogue $9.john's Academy, Jamestown, N.D., I 909, Annual Catalogue fit. Margaret'sAcademy, Minneapolis, I 907, and "Derham Hall-Program of Study, I 9 I 8 - I 9 I 9," St. Paul, ACSJC-SPP. 28. For sources on and examples of convent academy life in a variety of communities see Brewer, Nuns and the Education, 45-77, and Murphy, "Pioneer Roman Catholic Girls' Academies," 44-41 For examples of sources published for popular audiences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries see Mary Elliott, "School Days at the Sacred Heart," Putnam's Maga@ne, March I 870, 27 j - 86; Agnes Repplier, In Onr Convent D q u (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1905); and George Sand, My Convent Life, trans. Maria Ellery McKay (Boston: Roberts, 1893; reprint, Chicago: Academy Press, I 978). 29. Savage, Congregation ofst.Joseph, 60. 30. Memoirs of Eliza McKenney Brouillet, ACSJC-SLP. These memoirs provide rich descriptions of the early years (I 840s) of St. Joseph's Academy in St. Louis. 3 I. Ibid. 3 2. Sr. Winifred (Kate) Hogan, "My Reminiscences," 1922,ACSJC-SPP. 3 3. Woody, Hirtov o f Women'sEducation, 434- 5 6; Brewer, Nuns and the Education, 45-77. This comparison is probably based on a difference of degree of student supervision and regulation, which certainly varied depending upon the time period. Early Protestant seminaries were extremely restrictive with student behavior codes, but toward the end of the nineteenth century and definitely by the early twentieth century, Catholic convent academies retained more conservative student regulations than many private academies and certainly far more than public high schools. 34. Hogan, "My Reminiscences." 3 5. Brouillet's and Hogan's memoirs describe many student pranks. See also Evelyn O'Neill, "St. Teresa's Academy," Kansas City (unpublished manuscript, May 1925, ACSJC-SLP and STAA). 36. Hogan, "My Reminiscences." 3 7. St. Zresa'sAcademj Catalogue, I 9 I 9, 5 ,ACSJC-SLP; St. Joseph's Academy Catalogue, I 9 10, j, ACSJC-UP; Tucson C+y Directory (1881), 5, ACSJC-LAP; Wells, Schools, I 29. 38. Protestant attendance at convent academies is well documented. Some communities kept specific records on religious affiliation and actually had a Protestant majority in the early days of the academies. For information and discussion on this issue see Baumgarten, "Education and Democracy," 174-75, I 82, I 86-88; Brewer,

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Notes topages 167-71

Nzlns and the Education, 87 - 9 I ;Murphy, "Pioneer Roman Catholic Girls' Academies," 143-49; Ewens, Role of the Nzm, 66-67; Oates, "Catholic Female Academies," I 27-28; and Joseph G. Mannard, "Maternity. . . of the Spirit: Nuns and Domesticity in Antebellum America," US. Catholic ffistorian 5 (Summer I 986): j I I - I 6. 39. This quote and others are cited in Mannard, "Maternity . . . of the Spirit," 3 I o - I I . See TheAmerican Lddies Maga+ne, September I 8 34, and The Mother? Maga~ine, May I 83 5 . Editors of these magazines, Sarah Hale and Abigail G. Whittelsey, often used the writings and speeches of Catharine Beecher to promote these ideas. 40. Baumgarten, "Education and Democracy," I 86; Mary Ewens, "The Leadershp of Nuns in Immigrant Catholicism," in Women and Relkion in America, vol. I , ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 102; Mary Ewens "Removing the Veil: The Liberated American Nun,'' in Women of@;&: Female Leadersh$ in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin (New York: Simon and Schuster, I 979), 269. 41. Hogan, "My Reminiscences." 42. These four became leaders in the community, but there certainly were others of lesser status; unfortunately, biographic information is sketchy or absent on nineteenthcentury CSJs. For a discussion on the "social appeal" of Catholic religious life see Joseph Mannard, "Converts in Convents: Protestant Women and the Social Appeal of Catholic Religious Life in Antebellum America," Records ofthe American Catholic Historical SoiocieQ ofPhilade@hia I 04 (Spring/Winter I 99 1): 79 -90. 43. "Annals of the Sisters of St. Joseph at Chillicothe, Mo.," ACSJC-SLP. Mother Herman Lacy was one of the "mavericks" discussed in Chapter 3. Chillicothe appears to be where she was reassigned after her clash with a bishop while at the Cathedral School in New York. It is rare that a nun's loss of temper would be recorded by another sister, so Lacy's frustration over having been banished from the relative comforts of an Eastern academy to "primitive" northwestern Missouri must have been intense. 44. Diary of Sr. Justine LeMay, Hancock, Mich., ACSJC-SLP. 4 j . Sr. Dolorosa Mannix, "St. Joseph's Academy, Tucson"; Reminiscences of Sr. St. Barbara Reilly, ACSJC-LAP. 46. Ledger Book 3, I 873 - 83, St. Teresa's Academy, Kansas City, Mo., STAA. 47. "Brief Items Connected with the Establishment of the Home of Our Lady of Peace, San Diego, Calif.," ACSJC-LAP. 48. In the first eighteen years of the conservatory 4,421 pupils were registered in art or music classes ("St. Agatha's Conservatory-Number of Pupils, I 884- I 902," ACSJC-SPP). 49. Although the provincial archives (ACSJC-SPP) contain many materials about St. Agatha's, the most accessible and interesting information can be found in Ann Thomasine Sampson, "St. Agatha's Conservatory and the Pursuit of Excellence," Rams9 Cbung Hirtor~l24, no. I (1989): 3 - 19. The conservatory closed in 1962. 50. Memoirs of Sr. Francis Joseph Ivory, ACSJC-SLP. j I. See Chapter 4 for descriptions of CSJ fund-raising activities in the Rocky Mountains and Southwest. 52. Depending upon the location of the academies, boarders came from sur-

Notes to Pages 171-7j

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rounding states. In St. Paul, academies had high representations from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. In a central location like St. Louis or Kansas City as many as ten states might be represented at the academy. j 3 . Letter from Bishop Nicholas Matz to Rev. Mother Agnes Gonzaga Ryan, August j I , 191I , ACSJC-SLP. The sisters' behavior was not unusual for nineteenthcentury nuns on recruiting trips, so this clash probably had more to do with the power struggles between the nun and bishop. Matz and Ryan had not been on the best of terms ever since Ryan had withdrawn CSJs from St. Patrick's School (Denver) during Matz's legal dispute with Fr. Michael Carrigan two years earlier. As of this date she had refused to send sisters back to St. Patrick's. 54. By the rnid-nineteenth century CSJs and other sisterhoods filed for incorporation status to alleviate ownership disputes over their institutions. Examples of the struggles between male clerics and nuns fill the convent archives of every congregation. For examples from a variety of religious communities see Margaret Susan Thompson, "To Serve the People of God: Nineteenth-Century Sisters and the Creation of a Religious Life,'' Working Paper Series, Cushwa Center, University of Notre Dame, ser. I 8, no. 2, Spring 1987, and 'Women, Feminism, and the New Religious History: Catholic Sisters As a Case Study," in Belief and Behavior: Essays in the New Religious Hirtoy, ed. Philip R. Vandermeer and Robert P. Swerienga (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, r 99 I), I 3 6 -6 1; Ewens, Role ofthe Nun; George C. Stewart, Marvels of Char+: Hirtoy ofAmerican Sirters and Nuns (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 1994); and Florence Deacon, "Handmaids or Autonomous Women: The Charitable Activities, Institution Building and Communal Relationships of Catholic Sisters in Nineteenth-Century Wisconsin" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, I 989). 340- 8 5 . 5 5. O'Neill, "St. Teresa's Academy," 39 -47. 56. Ibid., 47. Fifty-one years later the CSJs in Kansas City "lost" in another property negotiation. The St. Joseph's Orphan Home for Girls was owned outright by the CSJs. They had never received remuneration for their seventy-seven years of service to the Catholic community in Kansas City, having assumed renovation costs and other expenses during that time. After the sisters refused Bishop John Cody's request to make it coeducational in I 9j7, he pressured them to sell it to him for $roo,ooo. Less than one year later he placed the property on the market for over four times that amount. See Michael Coleman, ed., ThisFar b_y Faith, vol. 2 (Kansas City, Mo.: Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, 199z), 575-77. j 7. Solomon, In the Compan~io f Educated Women, j o; Stewart, Marvels of Charig, j 49 - 5 6; Mary J. Oates, introduction to Higher Educationfor Catholic Women:A n HistoricalAntbology, ed. Mary J. Oates (New York: Garland Press, 1987), and "The Development of Catholic Colleges for Women, r 895 - 1960,'' US. Catholic Historian 7 (Fall 1988): 41 3 - 26; Edward J. Powers, A History Cy Catholic Higher Education in the United States (Milwaukee: Bruce Pub. Co., 19 5 8), I 84; Philip Gleason, Contending with Modernity Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Centuy (New York: Oxford University Press, 199r). 89. 5 8. See note 9 for documentation; however, it is important to note that many male colleges, Catholic or Protestant, included preparatory programs; therefore, some males were receiving secondary course work but under the auspices of a "college."

286

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Notes to Pages 17j-78

3 9.Mabel Newcomer, A C e n b y ofNigherEducationsforAmericanWomen (New York: Harper, 1939), 46. In I 870 this figure included only .7 percent of women between eighteen and twenty-one, and in I 920 it included 7.6 percent of this age group. 60. Edward H. Clarke, Sex in Education; Or, a Fair C'hancefor the Girls (Boston: Osgood, 1873), 18,23, 63, 69, 116,122-29. This book was widely read and went through seventeen printings. In 1874 Clarke wrote a sequel, The Building ofa Brain (Boston: Osgood, I 874). For further discussion of Clarke's impact on the debate on women's higher education see Rosalind Rosenberg, Byond Separate Spheres: The IntellectualRoots $Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, I @r), I -27. 61.Charles Darwin, The Descent ofMan and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray, 1871),1:278-79. 62.G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Pychology andlts Relations to P&ology, Anthropolog, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education (New York: Appleton, I 904), 2:602.These arguments are fully detailed in Henry Maudsley's Sex in Mind and Education (Boston: Osgood, I 884). Both Edward Clarke and Maudsley quote extensively from the writings of S. Weir Mitchell, a noted neurologist who recommended a "rest cure" for such "high-strung" women. One of his most notable patients was Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who later wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper:' fictionalizing her real-life experiences with Dr. Mitchell and the "rest cure." 63. Rosenberg, Byond Separate .Tpheres, 30-31, and "The Academic Prism: The New View of American Women," in Women ofAmerica: A Hirtoly, ed. Carol Ruth Berkin and Mary Beth Norton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., I 979), 3 18 -41.The nineteenth-century American West has often been portrayed as egalitarian in its early acceptance of coeducational colleges. In reality, the small struggling universities throughout the Midwest and West had no choice but to allow and encourage women to attend if they were to remain open. See John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Edtlcation in Transition: A ffistoy ofAmerican Colleges and Universities, 1636-1976 (New York: Harper and Row, 1976),66-69, and Lester F. Goodchild and Harold S. Wechsler, eds., The Histoy offfigher Education, 2nd ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster,

'997). 64. Rosenberg, "Academic Prism," 3 20 - 2 3; Solomon, In the Compan_yof Educated Women, j8. Solomon states that by 1900 more than twice as many women were enrolled in coeducational institutions than in women-only colleges. See Newcomer, Century ofH&her Education, 37,46,and Woody, Hirtoy o f Women'sEdcaation, 2:z) 6 - ) 7, 281. 63. Opponents and proponents of women's higher education used cultural arguments to predict contradictory outcomes on how women's education would impact sex roles, marriage, and childbirth. For examples see Mary Ashton Livermore, What Shall We Do With Our Daughters? (Boston: Lee and Shepard, I 883), 43 -4); Ely Van deWarker, Women's UnfitneessforH&her Edzrcati (New York: Grafton Press, 1go3),8; John Bascom, "Coeducation," EducationalReview 36 (1908):444;and Willystine Goodsell, The Education o f Women: 1t.r Social Background and Its Problems (New York: Macmillan, 1923).For a discussion on the concept of "race suicide" and how college-educated women were blamed for the lower white birthrate see Linda Gordon, Woman'sBo4, Woman'sRight (New York: Penguin Press, I 976), I 3 I - y 8.

Notes to Pages 178-79

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66. Thomas J. Shahan, "The Summer School," Catholic EducationalReuiew 2, no. 2 (September 191I): j93-604. 67. Woody, Hirtoy of Women'sEducation, 2:280 - 8 I . 68. For an excellent anthology of primary documents that illuminate the debates on Catholic women's higher education see Oates, Hkber Education. Two of the more outspoken bishops who were proponents of higher education for women were John Ireland (St. Paul) and John Lancaster Spalding (Peoria, Ill.). For a related discussion of clerical and lay attitudes toward women's place, suffrage, and higher education for Catholic women see Karen J. Kennelly, "Ideals of American Catholic Womanhood," in American Catholic Women:A n Historical Exploration, ed. Karen Kennelly (New York: Macmillan, I 989), I - I 6; James J. Kenneally, The Histoy ofAmerican Catholic Women (New York: Crossroad, 1990); and Colleen McDannell, "Catholic Domesticity, I 860- 1960," in Kennelly, American GtholiG Women, 48 - 80. 69. Educators at Catholic University in I 9 I I did inaugurate Sisters' College, which is described in more detail in Chapter j, adjacent to the university. Mary J. Oates, "The Development of Catholic Colleges:' 41 3 - 14, and introduction to Oates, Higher Education; Powers, A Histoy of Catholic Higher Edacaton, I 82 - 84; Gleason, Contending with Modernity, 87 - 89. 70. Oates, "Development of Catholic Colleges," 41 j; A Sister of Notre Dame (Mary Patricia Butler), A n Hirtorical Sketch o f Trinity College, Washington,D. C., 1897-1921 (Washington, D.C.: Trinity College, I 92 j), 72 -73. See also Oates, Higher Education. 7 I. Gleason, Contending with Modernity, 89 -9 j . The CSJs' College of St. Catherine in St. Paul was on this list of accredited institutions. By 1918 there was concern about Catholic women's colleges proliferating too quickly without enough concern for trained faculty and high-quality curriculum. See Mary Molloy, "Catholic Colleges for Women," and Grace Dammann, "The American Catholic College for Women," in Oates, Higher Bdacation, 342 -49 and 149 -70. 72. For an overview of St. Catherine's see Carol I),79. 20. St. Mary's Hospital in Tucson became highly successful, but with the loss of the railroad money and after eight unsuccessful years, St. Joseph's Hospital in Prescott closed and the building was converted into an academy. The Georgetown hospital prospered until the mining boom collapsed; the CSJs closed the hospital in 19 14. For additional information on Georgetown see Chapter 4. Other communities of nuns staffed "frontier" hospitals that served mostly male populations in the American West. See Edna Marie Leroux, "In Times of Socioeconomic Crisis," in Stepsis and Liptak, Pioneer Healers, I I 8 - 26, and Kauffman, Minirtp and Meaning,

96-128. 21. CSJ Constitution ( I 884), pt. 4, pp. 96-97, and CSJ Manual of Customs (1917), I I 7 -I 8, ACSJC-SLP. Apparently this policy of tolerance did not extend to race. Mary Oates states that as late as 1922, of the 540 Catholic hospitals in the United States, not one was for or admitted African Americans (CatholicPhilanthropic Tradition, 64-6 5). 22. Advertising booMet for "St. Joseph's Hospital, St. Paul, Minn." (1908), p. j,

ACSJ C-SPP. 23. St. Joseph Hospital-Patient Ledger Books, Georgetown, Colo., I 880- 89 and 1890-191 3, ACSJC-SLP. This diversity was also evident in other hospitals in the trans-Mississippi West, such as St. Joseph's Hospital in Kansas City, Mo. (see Patient Ledger Books, I 8 7 j -94, SJHA-KC); Ann Thomasine Sampson, Care with Prayer: A Hirtov $9 May? Hospitaland Rehabilitation Cinter (Minneapolis: St. Mary's Hospital, I ~ $ 7 5;) and ~ Alberta Cammack and Leo G. Byrne, Heritage: The Stoy of.)%M a y ? Hospital (Tucson: St. Mary's Hospital, 1981), 17. 24. Kauffman, Minist9 and Meaning, I 29 -67; Mary Carol Conroy, "The Transition Years," in Stepsis and Liptak, Pioneer Healers, 86-1 17; Starr, Social Transfarmation, 1 4 j -62; Oates, Catholic Philanthropic Tiadition, 39 - 4 j , 63 - 6 j . 2 j . Caring for special groups usually in separate facilities or separate wings of the building, these Kansas City hospitals divided patients by religion, race, class, ethnicity, gender, age, and specific infirmities. This eclectic mix of hospitals also included the "city pest-house boat" for smallpox patients, emergency hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, an eye and ear infirmary, and a tuberculosis hospital. Soward, Hospital Hill, 20-21, 34- 3 j, j 2- j 3,68. Two other CSJ hospitals also specialized in type of patient care-a maternity and infant hospital in Troy, N.Y., and a large tuberculosis clinic at St. Mary's in Tucson. 26. All quoted material comes from a series of twenty-three letters written to the St. Louis motherhouse between October j, 1898, and April 22, 1899. Except where indicated, the letters were written by the group's superior, Liguori McNamara (ACSJC-SLP).

Notes to Pages 194-96

( 293

27. Letter from Sr. Bonaventure Nealon (Nolan) at Camp Hamilton, Kentucky, to Rev. Mother Agatha Guthrie, October I 878, ACSJC-SLP. 2 8. Ibid. 29. Letter from Sr. Liguori McNamara to Sr. Lucida Savage, November 1, I 718, ACSJC-SLP. 30. Metz, "In Times of War,'' 65-66. Metz writes that the Daughters of Charity were sent to the Italian front in 1918. Other orders of nuns were not commissioned overseas but helped to staff "emergency" hospitals at training camps (in the United States) to nurse the large numbers of soldiers during the flu epidemic. 31. "General Statistics-Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph:' May 1920, ACSJC-G. 32. Savage, Congrgation of.St.]ososeph, 327; Dolorita Dougherty et al., eds., The Sirters of St. joseph of Carondelet (St. Louis: Herder Book Co., 1766), appendix j. George Stewart's recent analysis of the years I 866 to I 917 placed the Sisters of St. Joseph (which include the Carondelet CSJs and other affiliated groups) as fourth in hospital founding behind the Sisters of Mercy (77 hospitals), Daughters of Charity (5 8), and Franciscans (j 7) (Marvels $Charity, 3 29). j 3. Protestant nurse Jane Woolsey expressed the sentiments of some Protestant women when she stated, "[We] might have had an order of Protestant women better than the Romish sisterhoods, by so much as heart and intelligence are better than machinery.'' Hoqital D q s (New York, I 868), 44, as quoted in Maher, To Rind zrp the Wotmds, I 3 2. 34. "Copy of a Letter from Mother St. John Fournier," 3 3 5 - 36. 3 j. Letter from Sr. Liguori McNamara to Sr. Lucida Savage, November I , 1918, ACSJC-SLl? 36. Memoirs of Sr. Mary Thomas Lavin, ACSJC-LAP. 37. Letter from Sr. Liguori McNamara to Rev. Mother Agatha Guthrie, October I 3 and 22, 1898,ACSJC-SLl? 3 8. The number of nursing schools in the United States had increased to 43 2 by I 900 and I , I 27 by I 9 I o. Starr, Jbcial Transformation, I 5 j - 56, and Jo Ann Ashley, Hospitah Paternalism, and the Role ofthe Nurse (New York: Teacher College Press, I 976), 20. By 191j there were 2 2 0 Catholic nursing schools run by thirty different orders of nuns (Kauffman, Minist9 and Meaning, I j 4- 67). 39. Kauffman, Minist9 and Meaning, I j8. Kauffman also states that in secular nursing schools, the "convent metaphor" was used to foster the idealism of heroic, religious self-sacrifice (I 56 - 57). 40. "Application for Admission to Training School for Nurses-Hulda Olivia Larson" and "Circular Containing Terms of Admission:' n.d. (probably around 191j), ACSJC-SPP. Other CSJ nursing brochures have similar requirements and regulations. See also "St. John's Hospital Nursing School-Fargo, N.D.," ACSJC-SPP; "St. Joseph's Hospital-St. Paul, 1908,'' ACSJC-SPP; Sampson, Care with Prayer, I o - I 4; Phillips, "St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing"; and Cammack and Byrne, St09 of.9. Ma@, 24-26. St. Mary's Hospital School of Nursing in Amsterdam, New York, opened in 1920. Although few records are available, since the early sisters

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Notes to Pages 196-200

received their training at the CSJ hospital in Kansas City, their training school probably looked very similar. 41. St. Mary's Hospital in hfinneapolis began its program in 1900, and St. Joseph's Hospital in Kansas City began in 1901. Laywomen were admitted to these schools from their inception. For additional information on the history of these three early programs see John hf. Culhgan and Harold J. Prendergast, "St. Joseph's Hospital in St. Paul:' Acta et Dicta 6, no. 2 (October 1734): 1 - 16; Sampson, I'rqer with Care, 10- I 2; and Phillips, "St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing" 42. Sampson, Prayer with Care, I 7. 43. T h s information on Sr. Giles Phillips is taken from a letter written by Sr. Anne Catherine McDonald to "My Dear Friends," soon after the death of Sister Giles (letter dated November 27, 1962, SJHtZ-KC). Phillips was also the first sister-nurse on the State Board of Nursing of Missouri and an officeholder in the Kansas City district of the American Nurses Association and the National League of Nursing. 44. The smaller hospitals located in North Dakota, Tucson, and Amsterdam, N.Y., began their nursing schools later and had the benefit of expertise from the St. Louis and St. Paul provinces. The "Standard Curriculum for Schools of Nursing" was introduced in I 917 by the National League of Nursing Education (Kauffman, Ministy and hleanitg, I 6 I ) . 4 ) . "St. Mary's Hospital-Amsterdam, N.Y.," ACSJC-XP. Although Fr. William Browne purchased the original property and equipment in I 702, the CSJs paid $7,000 to acquire the property and added $ro,ooo in improvements. Some sisters were sent to Kansas City for nurses' training. The hospital was incorporated in 1909. It was not unusual for some early hospitals to have a garden and chickens on the premises to supplement food for the hospital. 46. Letter from Dr. J. D. Griffith to Rev. Alother Agnes Gonzaga Ryan, February 27, 1914, SJHA-KC. There are two other surviving documents on this issue, one unsigned and formatted more like a petition, and another from a physician, Dr. J. N. Scott. The CSJs did build a new hospital three years later (see SJHA-KC). 47. Sr. Erangelista \X7epandwas a founder of the Arizona State Nurses Association and campaigned to establish a statewide certification board. She became a charter member of the State Board of Nursing Examiners. Sr. Giles Phillips was the first sister-member and later president of the State Board of Nursing of Missouri. The National League of Nursing Education included many CSJs and other sisters. Approximately 1 0 percent of its membership collaborated to form a Sisters' Committee within the league. Sr. Esperance Finn was elected and served as a founding member and second vice president for the Catholic Hospital Association. 48. Kauffman, illinisty and Meanitg, I 7 I . 47. Ibid., 171-72, 230-32. yo. Letter from Apostolic Delegate D. Falconio to Rev. Mother Agnes Gonzaga Ryan, November 10, I 909, COPY in ACSJC-AP; letter from St. Paul province (probably Mother Seraphine Ireland) to Falconio, December I 2, I 907, ACSJC-SPP. 3 I . For data on specific Catholic sisterhoods and their social service activity see Dehey, Religious Communities of W5men.

Notes to Pages

200-

204

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$ 2 . Kathryn Kish Sklar, "Two Political Cultures in the Progressive Era: The National Consumer's League," in US. Hirtoy as Women'sHirtoy: New Feminist E s s y , ed. Linda I), 2 j 5 -72 and 273 - j 10. Protestant cleric Charles Loring Brace creatcd thc Chiidrcn's Aid Society, which took children from orphanages and sent them on trains to be adopted in the West. For a description of the "Orphan Trains" that took urban (and

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Notes to Pages 204-

>

many Catholic) children to Midwestern and Western states for adoption by "farm families" see Marilyn Holt, The Orphan Trainr Placing out in America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1772). Since the prior religious training of the children was ignored, many Catholic children were "lost to the faith" through this type of adoption. 5 8. Maureen Fitzgerald, "Irish-Catholic Nuns and the Development of New York City's Welfare System, I 840- I 700" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, I 992), 37 1. 5 7. Gates, Catholic Philanthropic Tradition, 7 - 8, z I . 60. Fitzgerald, "Irish-Catholic Nuns," 27 - 33 Cities that had large Catholic populations and powerful political machines often provided nuns with more autonomy and influence in conducting their welfare activities. 61. "General Chapter Summary-Sisters of St. Joseph," I 873 and 1720, ACSJC-G. Besides the five listed states, the CSJs had an orphanage in Marquette, Michigan, but it closed in I 702. In the 1720 report seven of the nine institutions are listed as orphanages in the summary, but two, a "Home for the Friendless" and an "Infant Home," provided for large numbers of orphaned children also. The term "half-orphan" was used to designate a chdd who had one living parent who, because of poverty or illness, could not care for the child. There were over 300 Catholic orphanages by I 700, caring for over 80,000 children. By 1720 institutional care had peaked and a steady decline began in favor of foster care (Stewart, Marvels ofCbarig, 3 34). 62. Papers from the St. Joseph Orphan Home for Boys, St. Louis, ACSJC-SLP. 63. "Thousands of Children Have Been Cared for in Orphanage," The Tucson Citixen, May 23, 1920. All surviving record books document the variety of ways that children came to the CSJ orphanages. These include the Record Book of St. Joseph's Orphan Home for Girls-Kansas City, I 870- 1917; Papers from the St. Joseph Orphan Home for Boys, St. Louis; Record Book for the St. Bridget's Half-Orphanage -St. Louis, I 862-1 8 8j ;and Firstilnnual afSt.Joseph's Homefor the Friendless- Chicago, I 7 I 2, ACSJC-SLP. 64. Record Book for St. Bridget's Half-Orphanage. 6 5. Letter from J. A. Charlebois to Archbishop J. E. Quigley, Chicago, Ill., March I 4, I 7 I I , ACSJC-SLP. 66. Record Book of St. Joseph's Orphan Home for Girls, January 3 I , I 910. 67. First Annual ofst. Joseph's Homefor the Friendless-Chicago, I 7 I 2. 68. Record Book of St. Joseph's Orphan Home for Girls, I 880- I 71 7. 69. Ibid., August 4, I 872. 70. Claire Lynch, St.Joseph Homefor Children, 1877-1960 (St. Paul: North Central Pub. Co., 1782), 21. Although this institution and the author of the book are Benedictine, there is some discussion of the CSJs' orphanage, and the state regulations are included in her description. 7 1. Aida Doyle, The Hictoty oftheSirters of St.Joseph of Carondelet (Troy, N.Y.: Srs. of St. Joseph, 1736), 203 -4; Emily Joseph Daly, "The Albany Province," in Dougherty et al., Sisters of st.]oseph, 277 -7 8. 72. "Sr. M. Incarnation McDonoughS account of the Chicago Fire:' ACSJC-SLP. The children and sisters walked for three hours until they reached the outskirts of town, where, out of sheer exhaustion, they rested. They were found five hours later

Notes to Pages toy -9

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by Jesuits from Loyola University who took the nuns and the children back to the college and temporarily housed them in classrooms. 73. Some constitutions of Catholic sisterhoods barred them from teaching or caring for males of any age. Although the CSJs had traditionallyworked with females in France, their constitution did not expressly forbid working with males, so they taught and cared for American boys, but in most cases only until the boys became adolescents. 74. "Chapter Summary Data, 1920" for the Troy and Los Angeles provinces, ACSJC-G. 71. "Chapter Summary Data, 1887, r 893,1908,1920" for the Troy, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and St. Paul provinces, ACSJC-G. In New York orphanages there was one CSJ per eleven children, and in Arizona the adult-to-child ratio was approximately one sister to thixteen children. Missouri and Illinois orphanages averaged one sister per eleven children, with two orphanages having as few as seven children per sister. Minnesota orphanages averaged one sister per eight or nine children. 76. Nurith Zmora, Orphanages Recomidered Child Care Institutions in Progressive Era Baltimore (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). Zmora concludes that orphanages were not isolating agencies of social control but provided for the multiple needs of nineteenth-century children. 77. Papers from the St. Joseph Orphan Home for Boys. 78. Record Book of St. Joseph's Home for Girls-Kansas City, June 1, I 883. Although this was a home for girls, the thirteen-year-old brother was allowed to work at the orphanage. He stayed with his three younger sisters for seven years. The CSJ orphan records, where available, provide interesting anecdotal information on the follow-up status of children who stayed for any length of time. 77. "Copy of a Letter from Mother St. John Fournier," 341. 80. Lelia Hardin Bugg, "Catholic Life in St. Louis," Catholic World 68, no. 403 (I 878): 14- 30. See also Hasia Diner, Erin's Daughkrr in America: Irish Imm&rant Women zn the Nineteenth Centuty (Baltimore:John Hopkins University Press, I 78 3), I 3 2. CSJ archives have no surviving documents from this institution, which Bugg reported served over I , 1oo girls and women each year. 8 I . First AnnzxaL of St. Joseph's Home for the Friendless-Chicago, I 9 12, and Third Annual Rport-St. Joseph's Homefor the Friendless-Chicago, I 7 I 6, ACSJC-SLP. 8 2 . "Masterson Day Nursery," Diamond]uDilee Histoy (n.d.), I 04- j ,ACSJC-AIJ. See also Daly, "Albany Province," 28 I - 8 j. 8 3. Fitzgerald, "Irish-Catholic Nuns," 3o I - 8r . Fitzgerald provides extensive detail on the work of Irish orders and their support of single women in spite of clerical disInterest. See also Diner, Erin's Daugbteers, I 30- 38. 84. Diner, Erin's Daughters, I jz. For a discussion of CSJ demographics, ethnicity, and the Irish influence see Chapter j. 8 1. Oates, Catholic Philanthropic Tradition, 7 1-76, 87 - 89. 86. Jessie Benton Fremont quote cited in Florence B. Yount, "Hospitals in Prescott,"Arixona Medicine, August 1976, 8 37 -42. Jessie Fremont, wife of the mihtary governor John C. Fremont, met the CSJs in St. Louis during the Civil War. 87. Arixona Miner, September 2, I 88 I .

298

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Notes to Pages 209-

Ij

88. Sr. Magdalen Gaffney, "History of St. Joseph's Home," ACSJC-LAP; Thomas Marie McMahon, "The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet: Arizona's Pioneer Religious Congregation, I 870- I 870" (master's thesis, St. 1,ouis University, I 9 5 z), I I 3 - I 6. Gaffney wrote that on one trip the conductor either did not believe that Sr. Angelica had permission to ride in the caboose for free or was hostile to nuns, but he stopped the train, making her and her orphan girl walk three miles through the desert to Tucson. 87. Yount, "Hospitals in Prescott," 83 8; Carol I, no. 3 (I 99>):36. 70. St. Paul Di~patch,December 27, I 876. 71. "St. Michael's Hospital-Grand Forks, N.D.," ACSJC-SPP, and "Sisters' Hospital-Georgetown, Col.," ACSJC-SLP. Both towns helped acquire property and begin the hospitals, but the nuns were expected to administer them, financially and practically. 72. "St. Mary's Hospital-Amsterdam, N.Y." 93. "St. Mary's Hospital-A Few Highlights," ACSJC-AP. 74. "The Sisters' Hospital and . . . a New Asylum for Homeless Children," Tucson Daib Star, December 2 j, I 887. 7 5 . "St. Mary's Hospital-Amsterdam, N.Y." 76. Although it was typical for sister-nurses to work in orphan homes, sisters working in orphanages in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City, Tucson, and Troy were particularly fortunate because they had CSJ hospitals close by or available in the same city. Sisters who worked in orphanages in cities that did not have CSJ hospitals had to depend on the generosity of doctors who donated their time to see the children. 77. "St. Mary's Home-Binghamton, N.Y." and the "History of St. Mary's Home -Binghamton, N.Y.:' ACSJC-AP. By the time Kennedy died in 191I , she had nearly repaid the entire debt. 78. Marian Devoy, "The Catholic Boys' Home: History of the Minneapolis Catholic Orphan Asylum" (master's thesis, University of Minnesota, 1944), 81. 79. "History of St. Joseph's Home for Boys-St. Louis, Mo." and "St. Joseph's Orphan Home for Girls-Kansas City," ACSJC-SLP. Donnelly had purchased the property for the cemetery. After he died in I 880, Sr. Alicia McCusker solicited food and clothing for the next six years. It was not until Sr. Alicia's death in 1886 that Hogan honored Donnelly's request and gave the asylum f l o o a month. "A few years later this amount was reduced to fifty dollars per month," and the July picnic was the only other source of income until 1713, when a new bishop, Thomas Idllis, "relieved the sisters from soliciting funds" by providing diocesan funds. loo. "History of St. Mary's Home-Binghamton, N.Y." The Binghamton orphanage was not unusual. Every history of CSJ orphanages includes mention of door-to-door soliciting and begging for food, clothing, and money. One or two sisters would be assigned to this job, and some nuns spent years performing this task. I o I . Third Annual Report-St. Joseph's Home for the Friendless- Chicago and Annual Rrports, Homeforthe FTjend/m, 1912-11. The list of benefactors and lay groups is impressive and includes the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Ladies Aid Society, St. Cathe-

Notes to Pages

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3 -I

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297

rine's Conference, Knights of Columbus, Ladies of Isabella, and the St. Thomas Aquinas Council. I 02. O'Grady, Catholic Charities, 3 I 8 -42; Oates, CatholicPhilanthropic Tradition, 3, I 3, 21-23,87. 103. Devoy, "Catholic Boys' Home,'' 63. 104. Phillips, "St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing." Phillips writes that St. Anthony's Maternity Hospital was really just a large residence and a hospital in name only. I o j . Devoy, "Catholic Boys' Home," 37- 84. The author obtained all information from official meeting minutes from February 18, I 878, and August 10, 1894. I 06. Oates, Catholic Philanthropic Tradition, 26 - 28,7 I -97. 107. Ibid., 8 I - 84. For a discussion on "scientific charity" and the loss of autonomy for laywomen and nuns see Fitzgerald, "Irish-Catholic Nuns," 477 - 9 5, j 67 - 69; Debra Campbell, "Reformers and Activists," in American Catholic Women:A n Historical Eqloration, ed. Karen Kennelly (New York: Macmillan, I 989), I j 2 - 8 1; James Kenneally, The Histo9 ofAmemcdn Catholic Women (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 89-1 I 2; and a special edition on social activism in U S . Catholic Historian I 3, no. 3 (Summer 1995). 108. Oates, Catholic Philnnthropic Tradition, 92. Oates writes, "Hospitals, more than other institutions, resisted oversight by central charitable bureaus."

I. George Stewart, "Sister-Population Statistics, I 8 30- 1990," in George C. Stewart, Marvels ofChari&: Histov ofAmerican Sisters and Nuns (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., I 974), j 6 j. 2. The Second Vatican Council (October 1962 to December 196j) "is regarded by many as the most significant religious event since the I 6th Century Reformation and certainly the most important of the twentieth century" @hard P. McBrien, ed., E n g clopedia of Catholicism, [San Francisco: HarperCollins, I 99j], I 299 - I 306). Attended by 3,000 people (mostly bishops) from all over the world, the council's goal was "to promote peace and the unity of all humankind." The end result was dramatic changes in all aspects of Catholic life. Although only ten nuns were allowed to be present, the changes enacted by the council had significant effects on life for women religious, who were encouraged to reexamine all aspects of their constitutions and practices in light of contemporary needs and issues. 3. Mary Ewens, "Women in the Convent," in American Catholic Women:A n Hirtorical Exploration, ed. Karen Kennelly (New York: Macrnillan, 1987), 33, and "Removing the Veil: The Liberated American Nun,'' in Women of @ir& Female Leadershz$ in theJewish and Chrirtjan Traditions, ed. Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 273; JO Ann Kay McNamara, Sirten in Arms: Catholic Nuns through 7ivo Millennia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, I 996), 61 3 - I 4; Susan Carol Peterson and Courtney Vaughn-Roberson, Women with Vision: The Presentation Sisters ofSouth Dakota, 1880-198) (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 224-26.

300

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Notes to Pages 216-23

4. Mary Jo Weaver, N e w Catholic Women:A Continuous Challenge to TradihnalReligioz~s Authority (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 198r), 3 1- 36. 1. Ewens, "Removing the Veil," 273. 6. Ibid., 272-74; Ewens, 'Women in the Convent," jj-57; Peterson and VaughnRoberson, Women with Esion, 226 - 27; McNamara, Sirters in Arms, 616. 7. Jay l? Dolan, TheAmerican Catholic Eqerience: A Historyjrorn Colonial Times to the Present (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1985), 192. See also Leslie Woodcock Tentler, "On the Margins: The State of American Catholic History," AmericanQnarterb4j,no. I (March 1993): 112-1 j. 8. McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 61 6 - 17. For information concerning Protestant women's status in the church see Ann Braude, ''Women's History Is American Religious History," in Retelling US.Religious Histoy, ed. Thomas A. Tweed (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 91. 9. Braude, "Women's History," 102; Barbara Welter, "She Hath Done What She Could: Protestant Women's Missionary Careers in Nineteenth-Century America," in E5i,men in American Relibion, ed. Jarlei Wilson James (Philadelphia: University of Peimsylvania Press, 1980), I I I -26. For examples of secular women's organizations that lost autonomy when combining with men's organizations see two essays: Estelle Freedman, "Separatism Revisited: Women's Institutions, Social Reform, and the Career of Miriam Van Waters," 171, and Linda Gordon, "Putting Children First: Women, Maternalism and Welfare in the Early Twentieth Century," in U S . Histoy as II:.bmen'sH i r t o ~N : e w Feminist Essays, ed. Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, I 99 r), 63. 10.Ewens, "Removing the Veil," 272; McNamara, Sirters in Arms, 61 3 .

Notes to Pages 224-

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$01

Selected BibZiogmpLy

Manuscript and Archival Collections Denver, Colorado Archdiocese of Denver Archives Kansas City, Missouri Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph Archives Saint Joseph Health Center Archives Saint Teresa's Academy Archives Latham, New York Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, Albany Province, Archives Los Angeles, California Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, Los Angeles Province, Archives Milwaukee, Wisconsin Bureau of Catholic Indian Mission Collection, Marquette University Archives St. Louis, Missouri Archdiocese of St. Louis Archives Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, Generalate, Archives Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Louis Province, Archives St. Paul, Minnesota College of St. Catherine Archives Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Paul Province, Archives Tucson, Arizona Saint Mary's Hospital Archives Selected Primary Documents The following sources were utilized throughout our research and have been obtained from the five CSJ archives in St. Louis, Missouri; Latham, New York; Los Angeles, California; and St. Paul, Minnesota. Although actual documents differ from one archive to another, each CSJ archive has similar types of materials. Correspondence of individual sisters and superiors, r 8 36 - I 9 2 0 . Correspondence of Felicitt de Duras Rochejaquelin to Bishop Joseph Rosati, St. Louis, 1831-36.

CSJ Constitutions, I 847 (trans. from French), I 860, and I 884. CSJ Customs Books, 1868 and 1717. CSJ Demographic information and mission records, I 8 36 - I 720. CSJ Novitiate Manual, circa I 8 j o. CSJ Profession Book, I 836- 1720. CSJ School/Teachers' Manuals, I 8 32 (French), I 884, and I 7 I o. CSJ Spiritual Directory, I 700. General Chapter Recommendations and Reports, I 867, I 87 j, I 88 I , I 887, I 893, I 899, 1708, 1914, 1920. Institution records and annals for schools, academies, hospitals, orphanages, conservatories, and miscellaneous institutions. Memorabilia collections, scrapbooks, photographs. Oral history interviews, diaries, journals, reminiscences. Postulant/Novitiate Records, I 8 37- I 720.

Selected Published (PrZmav and Secondav) Sources and Theses/Dissertations on the Sisters $9.Joseph of Carondelet French Background Byrne, Patricia. "French Roots of a Women's Movement: The Sisters of St. Joseph, 1610-1 836." Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 1785 . MedaiUe, Jean-Pierre. Constitutionsfir the Little Congregation ofthe Sisters ofSt.Joseph. Translated by Research Team of the U.S.A. Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Erie, Pa.: Sisters of St. Joseph, I 767. . Documents ofthe Little Design, St. Flour: The Rklements, the Eucharistic Letter. Translated by Research Team of the U.S.A. Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Erie, Pa.: Sisters of St. Joseph, 1973. . Maxims of the Little Institute. Translated by Research Team of the U.S.A. Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Erie, Pa.: Sisters of St. Joseph, I 77 5 Vacher, Marguerite. Des "rI'gulikres" dans le siicle: Les soeurs de Saintjoseph du Pire Midaille auxXXI.71 etXxI.7IIsiicles. Clermont-Ferrand: Editions Adosa, I 77 I . American Experience (I 8 36 - I 720) Ames, Aloysia. The St. MaykIKnew. Tucson, Ariz.: St. Mary's Hospital, 1770. Byrne, Patricia. "Sisters of St. Joseph: The Americanization of a French Tradition." US. CatholicHistorian j (Summer/Fall I 786): 241 -72. Cammack, Alberta, and Leo G. Byrne. Heritage: The Story ofst. Mary? Hospital. Tucson: St. Mary's Hospital, 178I . Cantwell, Laurent. A Designjr Lih~ingA History ofthe Sisters ofst. Joseph o f Carondelet in the Northwest. St. Paul: North Central Pub. Co., I 7 7 3 Coburn, Carol K. "The College of St. Catherine." In Hictarical Dictionav of Women's Education, edited by Linda Eisenmann. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, r 7 7 8 . "Sister Monica Corrigan." In Engclopedia ofthe American West.Vol. I , edited by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod. New York: Macmillan, 1776. 304

1

Selected Bibliography

Coburn, Carol K., and Martha Smith. "Creating Community and Identity: Exploring Religious and Gender Ideology in the Lives of American Women Religious, I 836-1920." U S . CatholicHirtOrz'an 14, no. I (Winter 1776):91 -108. . "'Pray for Your Wanderers': Women Religious on the Colorado Mining Frontier, I 877- I 717." Frontiers: A Journal o f Women? Studies I I , no. 3 (I 79 j): 27 - 5 2. Corrigan, Monica. Trek ofthe Seven Sirters (Dialy, 1870). Tucson: Carondelet Health Services, I 97 I. Cox, Ignatius Loyola. "The Mission in Long Prairie." Acta et Dicta 3 (July 17 14): 276- 82. . "The Mission in St. Anthony Falls, or East Minneapolis." Acta et Dicta 3 (July 1714): 283-87. . "Notes on the Misson of the Sisters of St. Joseph in St. Paul." Acta et Dicta 3 (Jdy 1714): 270-75. Culligan, John M., and Harold J. Prendergast. "St. Joseph's Hospital in St. Paul." Acta et Dicta 6, no. 2 (October 1734): 1 -16. Devoy, Marian. "The Catholic Boy's Home: History of the Minneapolis Catholic Orphan Asylum." Master's thesis, University of Minnesota, I 944. Dougherty, Dolorita Maria, et al., eds. Sirters ofst.Joseph o f Carondelet. St. Louis: Herder Book Co., 1766. (Separate chapters by Emily Joseph Daly, "Genesis of a Congregation: The European Story," "The Albany Province," and "Generalate"; Dougherty, "St. Louis Province"; Helen Angela Hurley, "The St. Paul Province"; and St. Claire Coyne, "The Los Angeles Province.") Doyle, M. Aida. Hirtoly oftbe Sisters ofst.Joseph o f Carondelet in the T r y Province. Albany: Argus Press, I 7 3 6. Hurley, Helen Angela. On Good Ground: The Stoly ofthe Sisters ofSt.Joseph in St. PmL Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, I 7 j I. . "The Sisters of St. .Joseph and the Minnesota Frontier." Minnesota Hiftoy 30, no. I (March 1747): I - I 3. Johnson, Patricia C. "Reflected Glory: The Story of Ellen Ireland." Minnesota Histoy 48 (Spring 1782): 12-23. Kennelly, Karen. "The Dynamic Sister Antonia and the College of St. Catherine." R a m q Coung Hirtog~I 4, no. I (I 77 8) : 3 - I 8. McMahon, Thomas Marie. "The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet: Arizona's Pioneer Religious Congregation, I 870- I 870." Master's thesis, St. Louis University, '752. McNeil, Teresa Baksh. "Catholic Indian Schools of the Southwest Frontier: Curriculum and Management." Southern Cal@rniaQuarter4 (Winter I 770): 3 2 1 - 3 8. . "Sisters of St. Joseph under Fire: Pioneer Convent School on the Colorado River." Journal ofAri7pna Histoy 27, no. I (I 78 8): 3 j - o. . "St. Anthony's Indian School in San Diego, I 886 - I ~)07."JournalofJan Diego Hirtoy 34 (Summer I 788): I 87 - 200. Martens, Elizabeth Marie. Academyfora Centuy. St. Paul: North Central Pub. Co., '7)'. O'Brien, M. Anselm. . . . The Likes of Ehj O'Brien. Florissant, Mo.: Huntington Press, 1977. -

Selected Bibliography

1

305

Perkins, Barbara Alice. "Educational Work of the Sisters of St. Joseph, I 903 - 1963." Master's thesis, Mt. St. Mary's College- Los Angeles, I 96 j . Purcell, Margaret John, ed.Jubilarse. St. Louis: Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, 1981. Ryan, Rosalie, and John Christine Wolkerstorfer. More Than a Dream: Eighg-Five Years at the College ofst. Cbtherine. St. Paul: College of St. Catherine, 1992. Sampson, Ann Thomasine. Care with Prqer: A Histoy ofSt. May's Hospital and Rehabilitation Center. Minneapolis: St. Mary's Hospital, 1987. . "St. Agatha's Conservatory and the Pursuit of Excellence." Ramsy County H i r t o y q , no. I (1989): 3-19. Savage, Mary Lucida. The Centuy's Harvest, 1836-1936. St. Louis: Herder Book Co., '936.

. The Congregation ofSt.]ososeph o f CarondeletA BriefAccount oflts Origns and Its Work in the United States, 16~0-1922. St. L o i s : Herder Book Co., I 923. Smith, Ann Cecilia. "Educational Activities of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in the Western Province from I 870-1903." Master's thesis, Catholic University, '9j 3. Soulier, Catherine Francis, "A History of the College of St. Rose- Albany, NY." Master's thesis, College of St. Rose, I 9 5 I.

Selected Seconday Sources The following sources were chosen because they were cited in two or more chapters and/or reflect the interdisciplinary nature of our research in women's history, religious history, history of women religious, educational history, and Catholic history. Baumgarten, Nikola. "Education and Democracy in Frontier St. Louis: The Society of the Sacred Heart." Hiftoly ofEducationQuarterly 54, no. 2 (Summer 1994): I71 -92. Braude, Ann. "Women's History Is American Religious History." In Retelling US. Religious Histoy, edited by Thomas A. Tweed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Brewer, Eileen Mary. Nuns and the Education ofAmerican Catholic Women, r86o-1920. Chicago: Loyola University, I 987. Buetow, Harold A. Ofsingular Benefit: The Stoy o f Catholic Education in the United States. New York: Macmillan, I 970. Burns, James A. The Catholic School $stem in the United States: Its Principles, Origin, and New York: Benziger Bros., 1908. . The Growth and Development ofthe Catholic School$stem in the United States. New York: Benziger Bros., I 9 I 2 . Cott, Nancy F. The Bonds of Womanhood "Women'sSphere" in New England, 1780-1831. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. Danylewycz, Marta. Taking the VeiI:A n Alternative to Mamage, Motherhood, and Spinsterhood in Quebec, 1840-1920. Toronto: McCleUand and Stewart, I 987. Davis, Cyprian. The Histoy $Black CatholiGs in the United States. New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., I 99 J 306

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Selected Bibliography

Deacon, Florence Jean. "Handmaids or Autonomous Women: The Charitable Activities, Institution Building and Communal Relationshps of Catholic Sisters it1 Nineteenth-Century Wisconsin." Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1787. Deutsch, Sarah. N o Separate Rejuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hirpanic Frontier in theAmerican Southwest, 1880-1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 1787. Diner, I-Iasia. Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Imm.&rant Women in the Nineteenth CenJohns Hopkins University Press, 1 7 8 5 t # ~Baltimore: . Dolan, Jay. TheAmeriGan Catholic Experience: A HistoTfrom Colonial Times to the Present. Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, I 78 j . , ed. The American Gtholic Pa&: A Histolyfrom 1810 to the Present. 2 vols. New 170rk:Paulist Press, 1787. Dolan, Jay P., and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, eds. Mexican Americans andthe Catholic Church, r9oo-~96~.Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1774. DuBois, Ellen Carol, and Vicki L. Ruiz, eds. UnequalSicters:A Multicultural Reader in US. Women'sHirtay. New York: Routledge, 1990. Ellis, John Tracy, ed. Docments ofAmerican CatholicHistoy. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Bruce Pub. Co., I 7 16. Engh, Michael E. Frontier Faiths: Church, Temple, and Synagogue in Los Angeles, 1846-rRR8. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, I 772. Ewens, Mary. "The Leadership of Nuns in Immigrant Catholicism." In Women in American Religon. Vol. I , edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller. New York: Harper and Row, I 78 I . . "Removing the Veil: The Liberated American Nun." In Women afSpirit: Female Leadership in theJewish and Christian Traditions, edited by Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1777. . The Role ofthe Nun in Mneteeuth-CentuvAmerica. New York: Arno Press, I 978. . "Women in the Convent." In American Catholic Women:A HirtoricalExploration, edited by Karen J. Kennelly. New York: Macmillan, 1787. Fitzgerald, Maureen. "Irish-Catholic Nuns and the Development of New York City's Welfare System, I 840- I 700." Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, I 772. Getz, Lorine M. "Women Struggle for an American Catholic Identity." In Women and Religon in America, edited by Janet Wilson James. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, I 780. Ginsberg, Lori D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Moralio, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Centur3, United States. New Haven: Yale University Press, I 770. Hackett, David G. "Gender and Religion in American Culture, I 870- I 730.'' Relgion andAmerican Culture 5, no. 2 (Summer I 77 I): I 27 - 5 7. Hennesey, James. American Chtholics: A Histoy ofthe Roman Catholic Communiiy in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, I 78 I. Hewitt, Nancy A. Women?Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1784. Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women'sMovement in the Black Bapti~tChurch, 1880-1920, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 177 5 Hoffman, Nancy. Woman's "Tme" Prafession: Voices.from the Histoy o f Eaching. Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, I 78 I.

Selected Bibliography

1

307

Hoy, Suellen. "The Journey Out: The Recruitment and Emigration of Irish Religious Women to the United States, I 8 I 2 - I 7 I 4." Journal o f Women'sHirtoy 6/7 (Winter/ Spring 179j): 64-78. Hufton, Olwen. The Poor ofEkhteenth-Centuy France, 17~0-1789. London: Oxford University Press, 1774. . "Women and the Family Economy in Eighteenth-Century France." French HistoricalStudies 9 (I 77 5 ) : 3 - 22. Hufton, Olwen, and F. Tallett. "Communities of Women, the Religious Life and Public Service in Seventeenth-century France." In Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World, ~ j o oto the Present, edited by Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert. New York: Oxford University Press, 1787. James, Janet Wilson, ed. Women in American Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1780. Jutte, Robert. PovetIty and Deviance in Ear4 Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1774. Kauffman, Christopher J. Ministy and Meanins A Religious Histoly o f CatholicHealth Care in the United States. New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., I 79 > . Kaufman, Polly Welts. Women Teachers on the Frontier. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1784. Kenneally,James J. The Histoly ofAmerican Catholic Women. New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1970. Kennelly, Karen J., ed. American Catholic Women:A n Hirtorical Exploration. New York: Macmillian, I 787. Kerber, Linda, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, eds. UJ: Hirtoy as Women's Histoy: New Feminist Essa_ys.Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1 7 9 ~ Kolmer, Elizabeth. "Catholic Women Religious and Women's History: A Survey of the Literature." In Women in American Religion, edited by Janet Wilson James. Philadelplhia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1780. Leary, Mary Ancilla. The Hirtoly o f CatholicEducation in the Diocese ofillbay. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 17 > 7. Lerner, Gerda. The Creation ofFerninid Consciousness:From the MiddleAges to 1870. New York: Oxford University Press, 197% Liptak, Dolores. Imm&rants and Their Church. New York: Macmillan, 1987. Logue, Marie Kostka. Sisters ofst. Joseph ofPhiladelphia:A Centay o f Growth and Development, 1847-1947. Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, I 7 j o. McDannell, Colleen. The Christian Home in Mctorian America, 1840-1900. Bloornington: Indiana University Press, 1786. McNamara, Jo Ann Kay. .Esters in Am: Cathoh Nuns throzrgh Two Millnnia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, I 996. Maher, Mary Denis. To Bind up the Wozmh: CatholicSifter Nurses in the U S Civil War. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, I 987. Mannard, Joseph G. "Maternity . . . of the Spirit: Nuns and Domesticity in Antebcllum America." US. Catholic Historian > (Summer I 986): 3 0 > - 24. Meyer, Bertrande. The Education ofsisters. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1941.

308

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Selected Bibliography

Misner, Barbara. Highly Respectable andAccomplished Ladies: Catholic Women Religions in America, 1790-1810. New York: Garland Press, I 788. Oates, Mary J. The Catholic Philanthropic Tradition in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, I 77 5 . . "'The Good Sisters': The Work and Position of Catholic Churchwomen in Boston, I 870-1 740." In TheAmerican Clztholic Reh@ow I,$, edited by Joseph P. White. New York: Garland Press, I 78 8. . "Organized Voluntarism: The Catholic Sisters in Massachusetts, I 870 - I 740." In Women in American Religion, edited by Janet Wilson James. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1780. ,ed. Higher Educationfor Catholic Women:A n HistaricdlAnthology. New York: Garland Press, I 787. 07Brien,David. Public Catholin'sm. New York: Macrnillan, 1787. Pascoe, Peggy. Relations $Rescue: The Searchfor Female MoralAuthority in the American West, 187f-1939. New York: Oxford University Press, I 770. Perko, Michael F., ed. Enlightening the Next Generation: ClztholiGs and Their Schooh, 1830-1980. New York: Garland Press, 1788. Peterson, Susan Carol. "A Widening Horizon: Catholic Sisterhoods on the Northern Plains, I 874- I 7 10." Great PlainsQuarterly j (Spring I 78 j): 12 j - 3z. Peterson, Susan Carol, and Courtney Ann Vaughn-Roberson. Women with Esion: The Presentation Sisters ofSouth Dakota. Urbana: University of Illinois, 197I . Raiche, Annabelle, and Ann Marie Biermaier. They Cdme to Each: The Stov ofsisters Who Taught in Parochial Schools and Their Contribution to Elementary Education in Minnesota. St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 1974. Ranft, Patricia. Women and the Relkions Lzji in Premodern Europe. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1776. Rapley, Elizabeth. The Divotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-CenturyFrance. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, I 770. Raymond, Janice. A Passionfor Friends: Toward a Phdosopby ofFernale Affection. Boston: Beacon Press, 1786. Ruether, Rosemary Radford, and Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds. In Our Own Voices: Four Centuries of Women'sRel>ions Writings. San Francisco: HarperCollins, I 97 j . . Women and Religion in America. 3 vols. New York: Harper and Row, I 78 I , 1783, 1786. Ruether, Rosemary, and Eleanor McLaughlin. Women of,@irit:Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977. Ryan, Mary P. Cradle ofthe Middle Class: The Family in Oneida Coun& New York, 1790-1861. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 178 I . Schlissel, Lillian, Vicki L. Ruiz, and Janice Monk, eds. Western Women: TheirLand, Their Lives. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, I 988. Scott, Anne Firor. NatnralAllies: Women'sAssociations in American History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, I 992. Shaughnessy, Gerald. Has the Immigrant Kept the Faith?: A Stu4 oflmmigration and Catholic Growth in the United States. New York: MacmiUan, I 72 j . Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Buiildig Sisterhood A Feminirt His-

Selected Bibliography

1

309

toy ofthe Sisters, Servants afthe Immaculate Heart ofMay. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, I 997. Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Catharine Beecher: A Studj in American Domesticity. New York: Vi! W. Norton, I 976. -. Florence Kel4 and the Nation's Work The Rise of Women'sPolitical Culture, r2), 24) (nn. 58, 61); authority of, and religious communities, 84; embroilment in local clerical feuds, 148-49,276 (n. 68), 277 (n. 69); on establishing Catholic schools, 1rg,131-32,182,276 (n. 67); ethnic backgrounds, 7 I , 2 > 5 (n. 8I). See also Ireland, John Blacks. See African Americans Boarding schools, 77, 167; CSJ Academy in Carondelet for girls, j 0- 5 2 ; destruction of Ursuline school in Charlestown, Mass., I , 43, 228 (n. z), 240 (n. 8); for French girls of higher social status, 26, 33, 37. See also Academies Boards of directors, male, for institutions staffed and operated by nuns, 21y, 217-18

Bogan, Mother Odilia, I 5 5 - 56, 276 (n. 67) Bohan, Sister Bridget, 289 (n. 80) Bonnefoy, Sister Emerentia, 108 Bon Pasteur (Good Shepherd), as establishment for confined prostitutes, 33-34 Boutt, Sister Marguerite-FClicitt, 39 Boyer, Sister Febronie, j y - > 6, 84- 8 > Boys: attendance at secondary institutions, compared to girls, 162, 178, 2 81 (n. 9), 2 83 (n. 26); caring for in orphanages, 209; classical curriculum in antebellum academies, I 6 j - 66, 2 8j (nn. 2 I , 24); education of by CSJs, 14, 245 (n. 43) 314

1

Index

Brace, Charles Loring, 296 (n. 57) Bracken, Sister Aurelia, 91 Braude, Ann, j -6,43 "Bride of Christ," nun as, 82 - 83 Brouillet, Eliza McKenney, 5 o- 12 Browne, Rev. William, 2 I 4 Burdier, Sister Jeanne, 27- 28 Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions (BCIM), rro, 111, 262 (n. 39), 263 (n. 44) Burion, Rev. Honoratus, 1 I 8 -I 9, 266 (n- 78) Bynurn, Carolyn Walker, 81 Byrne, Patricia, 80, 229 (n. 7), 21 3 (n. 5 7) Byrne, Sister Angelica, zr 3 Cahokia, Ill., as early CSJ convent site, 41, 43 -4>, 240 (nn. 11, 12) Canon law: definitions of nun's role in nineteenth century, 42; restrictions on nuns in early I goos, 2 2 3 -24 Caregivers: women as, I 03, I 90. See also Nursing; Orphanages Carmelite order, I 8 Carondelet, Mo.: destruction of convent by fire in I 8 5 os, y 6 - 5 7; as initial CSJ convent site, 43,44, 240 (n. 1I) Carrigan, Rev. Joseph, 148-49, 277 (n. 68), 277 (n. 69) Casey, Julia, 216 Catherine of Siena, 14 Catholic Boy's Home (Minneapolis, Minn.), 2 I 7 Catholic Church: espousal of single-sex institutions, 177; during French Revolution, 3 5 - 37; Second Vatican Council and changes in roles within, 223, 227, 300 (n. 2); as target for Protestant movements in nineteenthcentury America, 42-43, 7-19 (nn.4, 6); Vatican's imposition of restrictions on American nuns, 203, 223 - 24. See also Anti-Catholicism Catholic Education Association, I yo, I 80

Catholic Hospital Association (CHA), 202,212 Catholic Philanthropic Tradition in A n ~ ~ r i r a , T/3e (Oates), I I 1 Catholics: as minority in nineteenthcentury America, 42, 239 (n. 3). See also Anti-Catholicism; Ethnic identity Catholic University (Washington, D.C.). See Sisters' College Central City, Colo., CSJ forty-year ministry in, 118, 122-23 Chapellon, Sister Febronie, 39, 242 (n. 28) "Chapter of Faults," as public confession, 79 - 80, 2 3 1 (n. 39) Charlestown, Mass., destruction of Ursuline boarding school, I , 43, 228 (n. 2), 240 (n. 8) Chastity, vow of, 9 - 10, 8 j - 84 Chicago Fire (1871), 208-9, 297 (n. 72) Children: conditions for in seventeenthcentury France, 16- 17; education o f the deaf, 39,48,49- 10, 134, 272 (n. 21); "saving" from Catholicism by Protestant organizations, 2 0 5 , 296 (n. j7). See a h Education; Orphanages Children's Aid Society, and "Orphan Trains:' 296 (n. j7) Choir sisters, as class distinction in early CSJ convents, 8, 84, I 86, 2 3 I (n. 20), 25 3 (nn. > 8, 59). '07 (d.1 Cholera epidemics, 44, I o r , I 9 I , I 94, 240 (n. 12), 291 (n. 1) Church and Modern Socieg, The (Ireland), 182-83 Civil War, CSJs as military nurses in, 62-64,I92-94,29' (n. 9) Clarke, Edward, I 78 Class distinctions: attitudes of upperclass in European convents, 24, 28 -29, 84; choir and lay sister distinctions, 8, 84, I 86, 23 I (n. zo), (nn. 5 8, 5 9); dtversity of Catholic 25

women in American religious communities, 8, 2 - ) 3 Class sizes, in Catholic schools, 1 37, 272 (n. 28) Clerics/clergy: concern over nuns' service as nurses, 2 0 2 - j ; demand for bilingual parish priests, 141; disputes with CSJs over ownership of property 176-77, 286 (nn. 54, 56); emphasis o n in parish histories, 223, 2 5 2 (n. 45); feuds benveen, and positions of local nuns, 148 -49, 276 (n. 68), 277 (n. 69); influence of in areas served, 104; as itinerant priests in the West, 98-99, 257 (n. 3); power struggles over control of nuns' activities, 9, 46-48, 92-94; role of parish priest in local school, 148; salaries of brothers as teachers, 144, 276 (n. 57); views on higher education for nuns, I 86. See also Bishops Cloister: enforcement under Council of Trent, I 3 - 14, 232 (n. 3); partial cloister imposed in early I 9oos, 2 2 3 Clothing -religious garb: differences between lay and choir sisters, 84, 107 (ill.), 2 3 I (n. 20); inappropriateness for desert clime, 108; in public schools, 13 3, '34, 1 ~ 6271 , (n. '7) -secular: worn by nuns in antebellum America, 2, 41, 43, 228 (n. 2), 241 (n. I 8); worn by postulants, 7 I , 248 (n. '7) Cody, John (bishop of Kansas City, hfo.), 286 (n. 56) Coeducation, Catholic, I 36- 37, 272 (n. 24) Coercion of women into convents, as Protestant view, 2, 42, 68, 228 (n. 2) College of Notre Dame of Maryland, 1 80 College of St. Catherine (St. Paul, hfinn.), ~ j j 1, j 9 , 180-81, 182-81, I 87

College of St. Rose (Albany, N.Y.), 185-86 College prep courses, as later academy track, 166-67 Colleges: founded by religious orders of nuns, I 8o - 8r (see also inda'uidual schools); views on attendance by women, 178-79, 287 (n. 62) Colorado, mining frontier missions in, Commercial courses, as later academy track, 166-67 Common school movement, in nineteenth-century America, I 30- 3 I , 270 (nn. 6 7 ) Communities, religious, unique characteristics of, 7 - I I Confession, public, "Chapter of Faults" in convents, 79-80, 25 I (n. 39) Constitution, CSJ ("The Rule"), 9, 39, 7-36 (n. 43) -approval of American version, j 7,63 -French version, 28; emphasis on hospital and orphanage works, 30; powers of bishops, j 5, 244 (nn. 46, 52); translation into English, 5 2 -"Living Rule" as the highest compliment paid to a nun, 7 j -Maxims af the Little Institute, 2 3 -on prohibiting nuns as rectory housekeepers, 9 -provisions for entry into the community, 70-7' -as written by Mtdaille for orignal CSJ foundation, 236 (n. 43) "Contemplative" communities, changing role in America, 247 (n. 2) Convent life: as experience of boarding students, I 67-68; purported descriptions in anti-Catholic literature, 43 Convent schools. See Academies; Boarding schools Conversions, among Native Americans, 264 (n. 60) Corrigan, Sister Monica (Anna

316

I

Index

Taggert), 90, 106, 108-9, 121, 172, 244 (n. 47)>2 5 ' (n. 44), 261 (n. 34); on begging trips for hospital and orphanage funds, 174-7 j, 2 1 2 - I 3 Coughlin, Mother Seraphine, j ),Go, 243 (n. 3 8) Creoles, CSJ school for in Mobile, Ala., 743 Cretin, Joseph (bishop of St. Paul, Minn.), roo, 162, 257 (n. 9) CSJ Profession Book, 2 3 0 (n. 12) CSJs (Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet), I 3 - I 4 -in America: antebellum activities, 41 - 5 j , 19 I ; Colorado mining frontier outposts, I I 8 - 27; embroilment in local clerical feuds, 148-49, 277 (n. 68), 277 (n. 69); ethnic diversity, 86 - 91; frontier activities in the Southwest, roj - I 8; service in frontier cities, 99 - 101; struggle to create a general government structure, j 5 -62. See also Education; Nursing; Orphanages -in France, 39, 7-18 (n. 87), 89; foundation and activities before the Revolution, zo - 3 j , 2 3 J (n. 34); during the Revolution, 3 j - 36, 238 (n. 8 >) Curriculum: classical studies in boys' antebellum academies, I 6 5 -66,28 3 (nn. 2 I , 24); CSJ flexible teaching manual, I 37- 38, 273 (n. 30); gender ideology in secondary education, I 63, 28 3 (n. 26); of Indian mission schools, I r z - I 3; "male" oriented subjects taught at St. Catherine's, I 84; of nineteenth-century common schools, I 30- 3 I, 270 (n. 7); in nineteenth-century women's academies, 165-66, 280 (n. I); standardization of in Catholic school systems, 'TO-II> 277 (n. 75)

Dailey, Sister Rose Edward, 78, 143 Darwin, Charles, I 7 8

Daughters of Charity, I 9 - zo Daughters of St. Joseph, as original foundation for the CSJs, 21 Deaf children, 39, 48,49 - 50, I 34, 272 (n. 21) Deboille, Sister Saint Protais, 39,41, 43, 238 (n. I), 239 (n. 7), 240 (n. 11) Deboyne, Sister Clodine, 227 (n. I) De Chantal, Jane Frances, I 8 De Duras, FClicitC, 3 8 - 39 Degrees, academic: earned by nuns, I 84, I 86 - 87; for nuns in social services, 21 2 D e la Planche, Lucrkce, 2 j De la Tour d7Auvergne,Henry Oswald (archbishop), 29 - 3 0 De Marillac, Louise, I 9 - 2 0 De Maupas, Henry (bishop of Le Puy), 20-21,22,2j

Denver, Colo., religious orders serving in the 187os, 266 (n. 77) D e Paul, Vincent, 19, 234 (n. 27) Derham, Hugh, I 83 De Sainte-Beuve, Madame, I 8 De Saint-Laurans, Marguerite, as a founder of the CSJs, 2 2 - 23, 24 De Sales, Francis, I 8 - I 9, 2 3 Deschaux, Anne, as a founder of the CSJs, 2 2 Dever, Sister Austin, 201, 295 (n. 43) Divots/divotes, 17-1 8, 19, 24, 234 (n. 21) Dillon, Sister Mary Joseph (Anne Eliza), as first American CSJ nun, 46, 48, j2, 282 (n. 18) Diner, Hasia, 88- 89, 21 I, 2j4 (n. 7j), 274 (n. 39) Dix, Dorothea, I 93 Doctors, male: collaborative efforts with sister-nurses, 201 , 202; prestige of and growth of hospitals, z I 3 Dolan, Jay, I 3 I , 224 Domesticity, as Victorian era ideal, 80 Domestics, nuns viewed as, 9, 37 Domestic science, as later Catholic academy track, 166

Donnelly, Rev. Bernard, 101, 104, I 73, 2' j , 2-60 (n. 24), 299 (n. 99) Donnell~,Rev. J. J., I 37, 272 (n. 28) Donovan, Mother Matilda, 2 14 Doutreluingne, Rev. Peter, 44 Dowries, brought by postulants, 24, 26, 77-72, 7-17 (n. j8), 248 (nn. 11, 13) Drexel, Mother Katherine, as philanthropist and founder of order aiding Indians and blacks, I I o - I I , 26 3 (nn. 43,44)>7-74 (n. 41) Duffy, Mother Mary Aquinas, I I 3 Dunn siblings, vocations for, 210, 298 (n. 78) Edict of Nantes, effect on religious zeal in France, I 7, 237 (n. j 9) Education: common school movement in nineteenth-century America, I 30- 3 I , 270 (nn. 6,7); CSJ school for American boys, j4, 243 (n. 43); entering an order as means to, 70; further courses for teaching nuns, I j 3 - j 4; for girls in preRevolutionary France, 3 o - 3 2; Lutheran schools, 140, 274 (n. 38); for nineteenth-century women, 160-62, 280 (nn. I , 2, 5); of novices, 72-73; of nuns, 8-9, 231 (n. 22); for nuns in social service, 21 I - I 2; for orphans, 209; parochial schools in America, I 29 - j7, 269 (n. 2); for poor children, 26; prestige accorded to male school superintendents, I yo. See also Academies; Colleges; Curriculum Endowments, for women's colleges, 182, 289 (nn. 78, 86) Engelhardt, Rev. Zephyrin, I I 6 English language: need to learn and use in America, 43, j 3; Sister Mary Joseph Dillon as first CSJ native speaker, 48 Epidemics, nursing care during, 44, I o I , '90, '94, '99, 240 (n. '2). 297 (n. j)

Episcopal Church: women as nurses and in sisterhoods, I 91 Erin k Daughters in America (Diner), 88 Ethnic identit).: in Catholic women relig o u s communities, 8, 86-91, 2 31 (n. 19); in parishes and schools, I 40 -43; rivalries among American Catholics in Colorado, I 23, r 25, 268 (". '03) E~~han'stic I ~ l t e r(hledaille), 236 (n. 43) Euphrasia, Sister, I 09 Ewens, hlary, 42, 70, z j o (n. I I), 23 I (n. 21), 239 (n. 2); o n contributions of nuns in frontier areas, 99; on religious exercises for nuns, 79, 2 5 I (n. 37) Eyraud, Fransoise, as a founder of the CSJs, 21, 22, 25, 26 Facemaz, Mother St. John, 5 5 - 5 9,64, 7' Faribault-Stillwater (hfinn.) plan, use of public funds for Catholic schools, '33, 27' (n. '4) Feminist attitudes, of contemporary American nuns, 2 2 5 "Feminization" of Catholic Church, as seen by American Protestants, 43 Financial obligations, 5 2 ; control o f parochal schools by diocese, 143-48; for CSJ institutions, 173-76; Faribault-Stillwater plan for public funding, I 3 3, 27 1 (n. 14); Missouri state support of CSJ school for the deaf, 49 - 5 o, 242 (n. 30); orphanages' ways of meeting, 2 I 2 - I 9; problems in antebellum convents, 44, 241 (n. I 3). See also Begging; Fund-raising programs Fine arts: founding of St. Agatha's Conservatory, 174, 285 (n. 48); as separate school fee courses, 165, 283 (nn. 21, 24). .Tee also Music lessons Finn, Sister Esperance, 295 (n. 47) Fitzgerald, Maureen, ~ o J - G ,297 (n. 60)

z 18

1 Index

Flanagan, Sister Grace Aurelia, 68 Flynn, Sister Charitina, 68, 247 (n. 5) Fontbonne, hiother St. John, 38-39, 48, 5 2 Fontbonne, Rev. Jacques, 46-48, 241 (nn. I 9, 20) Fontbonne, Sister/hlother Delphine, 39945, 48-49, 242 (n. 23)>29' (n. 6) Fontbonne, Sister/hlother Febronie, 39, 45, 47, 48 Fontbonne College (St. Louis, 1\20.), I 86 Food donations: to orphanages, z I 5; for parochial school nuns, 147 Fort Yuma Government School (Yuma, Calif.), I I o, I I 6 - I 8, 26 5 (n. 66) Fournier, SisterjMother St. John (Julie), 39. 46, 49. ( 3 - 14, 5 9, 199, 245 (n. 571, 7-72 (n. 21) France: seventeenth-century life in, I j - I 8. JPe also CSJs-in France Frappa, Catherine, as a founder of the CSJs, r z Fremont, Jessie Benton, 2 I 2 - I 3, 298 (n. 86) French-born members, of the CSJs, 87 French Canadians: as CSJ members, 87; parishes for, I 40 French regime, in early American CSJ convents, 48 Friendships, among nuns, 7 8 - 79, 2 5 o (nn. 32-36) Fund-raising programs, 173; to found College of St. Catherine, I 82- 83; in frontier \ k s t , I I 8-19, 120-21, I 24, 266 (n. 78); hospital "insurance" policies, 2 I 3

Gaffney, Sister hlagdalen, 299 (n. 88) Garb, religous. See Clothng-religious garb Gender, 2 2 2 -conforming to nineteenth-century ideals of women, 80- 84 -curriculum b~asesin secondary education, I 6 j, 28 j (n. 26)

-and religon in women's lives, 5 -6 -roles of nuns: concepts among Catholic male clergy, 3; as nurses, I 70, I 73 - 74; worhng on I n d a n missions, I I 5 - I 6 Georgetown, Colo., CSJ forty-year ministry in, 118, 122, 123-25, 194 Georgetown Cottrier (newspaper), I 2 5, 268 (n. 77) German-born members, of the CSJs, 5 3, 872 7-43 (n. 39) German language, insistence on use in schools, 140, 141-42, 271 (11. 14), 274 (n, 381, 275 (n. 45) Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 287 (n. 62) Girls -American: attendance at secondary institutions, compared to boys, 162, 178, 281 (n. 7), 283 (n. 26); nuns as "natural" teachers for, I 44; opportuniues during colonial era, I 30, 269 (n. 3); schools for established by nuns, I 03, z 5 9 (n. LO).See also Academies -French: boarding schools for higher social classes, 26, 3 3 , 37; education before Revolution, jo- 3 2; trades taught to orphans, z Government, CSJ, struggle to obtain a central structure, 5 5 -62 Grace, Thomas (bishop of St. Paul, hlinn.), 60, 245 (n. j 8) Grant, Zilpha, 161, 162 "Great men," Catholic, as approach to history in parochial textbooks, 140 Grey Sisters, 14 Griffith, J. D., 202 Griswold, Robert, I 26 -27 Guthrie, Mother Agatha (hlinerva), as second CSJ superior general, 64 - 6 5 , 7 3 - 7 4 , 1 1 ~ , 1 1 8 , 1 7 2 , 774,247 (n. 74) Habits, nuns'. See Clothng-religous garb Hall, G. Stanley, 178

Hennesse); Sister Adele, I 5 4 I-Iigh schools, creation of in Ca~holic systems, I 50-11 Hispanics: CSJ activities among in the Tucson area, I 06; recruitment for American religious orders, 87, 70, 2 3 5 (n. 78) Histories, parish, 2 5 2 (n. 45) Histoy of- W/omeniEducation in the United States, A (Woody), 2 80 (nn. 2, 5) Hogan, John (bishop of Kansas Cit); T\fo.), 93, '76-77, 215, 279 ( n 99) Hogan, Kate, 168-69 Hogan, Sister Winifred, 74, I 54 Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.), 207, 211, 215, 297 (n. lor) Home of the Immaculate Conception for Working \%men (St. Louis, hfo.), 210-1

1

Hospital(s) -in America, 2 I 3; CSJ accommodations for railroad men, r 74, 2 1 j, 293 (n. 20); established by Catholic orders, 191, 9 4 - 3 6 , 198, 292 (n. 19); "maternity" hospitals for poor women, 216-17, 300 (n. 104); for miners in Georgetown, Colo., 1 23, 125, 194,213,268 (n. 9:) -in France: hitetels-Dieu, 27, 27, 2 3 5 (n. 36); as multipurpose institutions, 219 2 3 5 (n. 35) Hospital Sisters of St. Francis, 2 0 0 Howard, Sister Celestine, 174, I 8 I , 28 8 3 1 3

(n. 75) Hull House (Chicago, Ill.), 77 Hurley, Sister Cecilia Marie, 7 5 Huster, Sister Mary Eustace, 90, I 5 3 Ignatius of Loyola, 234 (n. I 7) Immigrants: desire to keep own faith and cultural traditions, 140; nuns as educators and caretakers for, 2 2 1 . I r e also Ethnic identity Influenza epidemic of I 9 I 8, I 97 -38

Index ( j 1 9

Ireland, John (archbishop of St. Paul, hfinn.), 85, 104, 133, 259 (nn. 22, 231, 2 7 1 (n. 14), 288 (n. 7 5); founchng of CSJ-staffed boys' orphanage, 2 I 7I 8; as proponent of higher education for women, I 81-82, 288 (n. 68) Ireland, Sister St. John (Eliza), I 8 I , 288 (n. 7 5) Ireland, Sister Seraphine (Ellen), I 8 I , 288 (n. 75) Irish Americans: aid for girls and women by nuns, 21 I ; as clerical and religious superiors, 2 3 3 (nn. 8 I , 8 2); as teachcrs in public school systems, 140-41, 274 (n. 39) Irish-born women, entering American convents, 3 3, 87-90, 243 (n. 39) Italian Americans, Catholic schools for, 141 Ivory, Sister Francis Joseph, loo, 101-2, 174, 258 (n. 16) Jesus, androgynous qualities of used by Protestant women, 82 Jewish girls, as students in Catholic institutions, I 70-7 I Joseph, Saint, as CSJ patron and male role model, 82, 2 5 2 (n. 5 I ) Julian of Nonvich, 24 Kansas City, hlo.: arrival of the CSJs, I 01 - 2, 259 (n. 1 8); segregated hospitals in, 195-96, 293 (n. 25) Kauffmann, Christopher, 2 0 2 Keating, Mother de Chantal, 63, 193, 292 (n. 1 3) Kennedy, Mother &ry Joseph, 208-9 Kenrick, Peter Richard (archbishop of St. Louis, Mo.), 71; role in creating CSJ general government structure, T 5-59, 61, 7-44 (nn. 46, 52) Know-Nothing Party, 42, 86, 239 (n. 6) Labas, Mother Saint Agnes, 33, 34 Lac!; Sister Mary Herman (a.k.a

320

/

Index

Margaret Mary), disputes with the male hierarchy, 92 - 94, I 7 3, 2 3 5 (n. 8% 256 (n. 90), 285 (n. 43) Ladies of hlercy (France), 34 Laity: role in supporting nun-operated institutions, 2 I 1- 19; as teachers in nineteenth-century Catholic schools, '43-44, 271 (n. 52) Languages: insistence o n use of German in schools, 140, 141-42, 271 (n. 14), 274 (n. 3 % 275 (n. 45); nuns learn Indian tongues, I I 3; use of English in America, 43, 48, 5 3 Larson, Hulda Olivia, 2 0 0 Lavin, Sister hlary Thomas, I I 3, I 99 I.ay sisters, and class &stinctions in early CSJ convents, 8, 84, 107 (ill.) 186, 2 3 1 (n. ~ o ) 253 , (nn. j 8 , 59) Leary, Sister Stanislaus, 92, z 15 (n. 8 5) LeMay, Sister Justine, I 7 3 I,e Puy, France, as historical foundation for the CSJs, 2 0 - 2 I Iillis, Thomas (bishop of Kansas City, M0.L 299 (n. 99) Littenecker, Sister Julia, 62, 90, I 16, I I 8, 263 (n. 45) Littenecker sisters, vocations for, 68 I,os Angeles province, creation of, 90, 25 5 (n. 78) Louis XIV (king of France), 237 (n. r 9) Louis XV (king of France), 29 Lovejoy, Eli P., 42 Luther, Martin, I 7 Lutheran Church: German language seen as vehicle of doctrine, 140, 274 (n. 38); women as nurses and in sisterhoods, I 9 I Lynch, Sister Cyril, 74-7 5 Lynch, Sister Mary Louis, 62-63 McCarthy, Sister Serena, 142, 275 (n. 47) McCusker, Sister Alicia, 299 (n. 99) hlcDannell, Colleen, 80

McDonough, Sister Incarnation, 208 McGowan, Sister P e t r o d a , I j I McGuffy Readers, 270 (n. 7) Machebeuf, Joseph (bishop of Denver, Colo.), I I 8, I 17-20, 266 (n. 77), 276 (n. 68) McHugh, Sister Antonia, I j 7, I 84- 8 j, 187, 287 (nn. 83, 86) McNally, Rev. J. B., I 37, 145 -46, 272 (n. 28) McNamara, Jo Ann Kay, 83, 236 (n. 39), 2j3 (n. r3) McNamara, Mother Liguori, 176 -97, '77 McNierney, Francis (bishop of Albany, N.Y.), 72 McQuaid, Bernard (bishop of Rochester, N.Y.), 72 "Madame Celestine's School" (St. Joseph's Academy), j o - j 2 Maher, Mary Denis, 19 I , 27 1 (n. 7) Males: education of elite whites during colonial era, 130, 267 (n. 3); as gatekeepers of religious rituals, 70; hicrarchal powers and nuns' activities, 92 -74; nursing of by nuns, 62-64, 190, 192-96, 271 (n. 7); saints as role models for nuns, 82; as teachers and school administrators, I 44-47, 1 j 0. See also Boys Manual of Customs, CSJ, on nonCatholic hospital patients, 174-9 j Manuals: for novices, 73 -74, 249 (n. I 8); teaching, for CSJ nuns, 137-39, '53, 154, 273 (". 30) Marriage: age of for secular women, compared to postulants entering convents, 71; nuns as "brides of Christ," 82 - 83; as termination of public school teacher's career, I j I Marsteller, Sister Mary Rose, I 38, I 64, 282 (n. 18) Masterson Day Nursery (Albany, N.Y.), 21 I

"Maternal feminism,'' as concept of

asserting oneself for others, 8 I ,

J2

(n. 47) Mathematics, courses in antebellum Catholic female academies, I 6 j , I 66 Matz, Nicholas (bishop of Denver, Colo.), 148-47, 171, 276 (n. 68), 277 (n. 67), 286 (n. 3) M a x h of Pefection (Mtdaille), 80 - 8 I, 236 (n. 43), 2 j ' (n. 42)>2 1 2 (n. j 1) Mtdaille, Rev. Jean-Pierre, SJ, 2 I - 24, 256 (nn. 37,43) Mentoring, for fledgling teaching nuns, 78, 1 r 3 > 1 ) ) Mexican-born members, of the CSJs, 87, 903 25 I (n. 78) Meyer, Rev. A. J., I 3 j Miguel (Yuma chief), "7, 26j (n. 66) Miners, CSJ hospital care of, I 23, I 2 j, '94, 213,268 (n. 77) Minneapolis, Minn., CSJ services in, I o I MinneapoliFJournal (newspaper), I 3 3 Minnesota: banning of wearing nun's habits in public schools, I j 6; pioneer work by the CSJs, 87,77,77 - 100 Missionary work: by the CSJs in the Southwest and California, I 07 - I 8; in France, 21, 22, 31-32, 235 (n. 37); restricted roles for Protestant women, I I J - 1 6 Mitchell, S. Weir, 287 (n. 62) hlotherhouse(s): regional, 87; severance of ties with France, j, r j o (n. I 3); St. Louis house designated as location of CSJ general government, j 7, 5 8; Vienne, France, as location of, 28 Moulinier, Rev. Charles, ror Mt. St. Mary's College (Los Angeles, Calif.), I 86 Mt. St. Michael's Academy (Central City, Colo.), I 2 2 Mullanphy, Mrs. John, jo, 242 (n. 32) Murphy, Sister Marguerite, 149, 277 (n. 67) Music lessons: as additional source of income, 14j, 147, 166, 174

Names, of religious, use of male saints or martyrs as, 82 iVatchex(ship), I , 39, 227 (n. 1) National Board of Popular Education (NRPE), 162, 2 8 1 (n. 10) National Conference of Catholic Charities, 2 I I - I z National League for Protection of American Institutions, 262 (n. 39) National 1,eague of Nursing Education (NLNE), 202, 293 (n. 47) Native Americans (Indians): CSJ missionary work among in the Southwest and California, I 09 - I 8; recruitment for Catholic religious orders, 90 Neenan, Sister Mary Pius, I 57 Nightingale, Florence, I 91 Novices: leaving convent life, 76; period of training and expectations of, 72-74, 249 (n. 27); rites of passage for, 76 Nuns: attitudes of upper-class women in French convents, 24, 28-29; conforming to Victorian ideal, 80- 84; embroilment in local clerical feuds, 148-49, 277 (n. 68), 277 (n. 69); foreign-born entering .-lmerican orders, 33,71, 78, 87-90, 243 (n. 391, 2 j 5; numbers in religous orders, 2, 4, 39, 93, 221, 7-28 (n. 41, 2 3 0 (n. 1 1 1 , 238 (n. 87), z j 6 (n. 92); peasants accepted into new active French orders, I 9 - 20; property rights during seventeenth-centur~;I 3 ; recruitment of Americans as postulants, 3 2; role in religious organizations, j -4; as surrogate priests in isolated areas, 99, I 14, 222; unattached sisters sought by bishops, 91 -92. See also Nursing; Teaching Nursing: as a career for nineteenthcentury Protestant women, I 90, I 93; CSJ Civil War record, 62-64, 192-94, 291 (n. 9); C5J secular grad-

322 , Index

uates' service in World War I, r 98; the CSJs in Spanish-American War, I 91 96, roo, 229 (n. 9); as a major ministry for the CSJs, 34, 123, 190-203; training programs for, I 99 - 201, 294 (n. j8), 39; treatment of sick orphans by sister-nurses, zoo (n. 96), 214 Oatcs, hIary J., 203, 206, 2 1 8, 274 (n. 41), 278 (n. 79), 300 (n. 108) Obedience, vow of: regulations in the r 900s prior to Second r'atican Council, 224; used to circumvent local demands by bishops and clergy, 9, I 19-20, 149, 266 (n. 82) O'Brien, Rev. Frank, 93 -94 O'Hrien, Sister Anselm, 69, 74-75 O'Gorman sisters, vocations for, 68 O'Kelly, Sister hilbe, 88, 142 O'Neill, Mother Ambrosia, I I 3, I I 6, 263 (nn. 67, 68) O'Neill, Sister Evelyn, 176-77, I 85, '87 "Ornamental" courses, offered by academies, I 6 3 , 28 j (11. 2 I) Orosco, Sister Agnes, 142 Orphanages, 131, 104, 203 - I 2, 297 (n. 61); acquisition of boys' h o n ~ e in Philadelphia, 34, 243 (n. 43); in Colorado, 268 (n. 97); in France, 2 5 - 27; half-orphanages for children with surviving parents, 207 "Orphan Trains," 296 (n. 57) Oswego I'alladiun~ Times (newspaper), 164-6j Our 1,ady of Lourdes parish school (Georgetown, Colo.), I 2 3 Papal approbation, for religious cammunities, 61-62, 84, 223, 277 (n. 72)) 291 (n. 9) Parrott, Mother Elizabeth, 79, 147 Pascoe, Peggy, I o 5, I I 3 Pascual (Yuma chief), I 17, 265 (n. 66) "Passionlessness," ideology of, utilized

by Protestant women in public sphere, 84 Patriotism, as theme in nineteenthcentury textbooks, I 3 9 - 40 Paul, Saint (New Testament), on women's role, 14 Peasants, French: schools for rural girls, j 2; women accepted into new active religious orders, I 9 - 20 Pedagogy, nineteenth-century, flexibility of CSJ teaching manual, I 3 8- 39, 271

proposed CSJ general government, 5 8, 244 (n. j 2), 24j (n. 61); struggles over control of nuns' activities, 9, 46-48,92-94 Power, Sister Marsina, I I 3 Priests, surrogate, nuns as in isolated areas, 99, I I 4, 2 2 2 Proff, Sister Radegunda, 141-42 lJroperty rights: of religious orders, 176-77,286 (nn. 54, 56); of women in French orders, 15, 18-19,232

(n. 30) Penitents, repentant prostitutes seen as in France, 3 3 - 34, 2 3 8 (n. 79) Peters, Sister Martha, 108, 109 Peterson, Jacqueline, 1 L 3 Philadelphia, Pa.: CSJ acquisition of boys' orphanage in, 34, 243 (n. 43); first CSJ hospital in, I 91; loss of CSJ house in, 39-60 Philadelphia Bible fiots, I 3 I Philanthropy, Catholic, 2 I J - I 7 Phillips, Sister Giles, 172, 201, 29j

(n- 3) Prostitutes, confinement in French convents, 32-34 Protestant,The (newspaper), 42 Protestants -American: and common school curriculum, I 30- 3 I, 270 (n. 7); effect of men entering previously al-female organizations, 2 2 5 ;establishment of female academies, 160-61, 280 (n. 5); treatment of in CSJ hospitals, 194-9 5 . See also Anti-Catholicism; Protestants-women -European: criticisms of and Council of Trent, 23 2 (n. 3); schools for converts to Catholicism, 26, 3 I, 217

(n. 47) Piccolomini, Rev. Francis, SJ, 2 I PleaJor the West,A (Beecher), 98 Polish immigrants, parishes for, 140 Pommerel, Sister/Mother Celestine, 39, 4648, > l , 168, 241 (n. 1% 272 (n. 21) Poor, as deserving or undeserving, 205, 2' 2,296 (n. I r) Porter, Sister Angelica, I I 9, 120-22 Postulants: age of, 70-7 I; dowries brought by, 24,26,71-72,257 (n. 58), 248 (nn. I I , I 3); entering Lyons motherhouse, 2 3 8 (n. 89); leaving convent life, 76 "Poughkeepsie Plan,'' use of Catholic schools, I 3 2 Poverty: of reservation Indians, I i 2; in seventeenth-century France, I 6 Poverty, vow of, 9, 83, 23 2 (n. 24); as a way to empathize with the needy, I 26 Power: perceived loss by bishops in

(nn- 59.73) -women: as converts and nuns, 172; girls as students in Catholic institutions, 161, 170-72, 284 (n. 38); in nineteenth-century public charitable work, 204- j; public voice on social issues, 222; religious activities of, compared to Catholic nuns, 9, 10, 84, roj, 191, 2 3 2 (n. 24); religious activities of in a male dominated society, 6-7; restrictions on doing missionary work, I I 5 -1 6; suitability of nursing as career, I go, 193; use of Jesus' androgynous qualities, 82; use of terms "sister" and "mother," 77; perceived competition with nuns on frontier, I o j - 4, I 26 -27 Provinces, regonal, of the CSJs, 87

Public schools: comparison of teachers to nuns, I j I - j 2, 278 (n. 77); compromise plans using Catholic facilities and teachers, I j 2 - 34, 27 I (nn. I 4, 17); Irish Americans as teachers, '40-41, 274 (n. 39) Pugh, Sister Monica, 172 Quigley, James E. (bishop of Chicago), 21r

Quillinan, Sister Mary Rosina, I 5 7 Raiche, Sister Annabelle, I j 3 Railroads: CSJ hospital accommodations for employees, 174, zr 3, 273 (n. 20); nuns riding in cabooses, 21 3, 299 (n. 88); passes supplied to traveling nuns, r 83, 266 (n. 78) Rapley, Elizabeth, I j, 2 3 j (n. 37) Recruitment: for the CSJs in foreign countries, 88; of students for academies, 170, 17j, 183, 286 (n. j3); of students for College of St. Catherine, 183-84 Reilly, Sister Barbara, I I 5, 173 Religious of the Sacred Heart, 82 "Republican Motherhood," as concept for nineteenth-century female education, 160 Revivals, and nineteenth-century religious fervor, I 60 Rots, anti-Catholic, in New York City and Philadelphia, I 3 I Role models: male saints as for nuns, 82, j 2 (n. j I); mentors for fledgling teaching nuns, 7 8, I 5 3, I j j ; nuns as for girls in academies, I 7 r , r 72 Role ofthe Nan in Nineteenth-Ckntary America, The (Ewens), 237 (n. 2) Rooney, Sister Blanche, r 5 I , I 86 Rosati, Joseph (bishop of St. Louis, M0.L 38 -37.47-48, 242 (n. 43), 244 (n. 46) "Rule, The." See Constitution, CSJ Russian-born members, of the CSJs, 87

Ryan, Mary, 10j Ryan, Reverend Mother Agnes Gonzaga, 7, 147,17j, 776, I 87,286 (n. 13) Sacred Heart Academy (St. Louis, Mo.), '64 St. Agatha's Conservatory (St. Paul, Minn.), as first fine arts school in Minnesota, I 74, 28 5 (n. 48), 288 (n. 7j) St. Ann Stift College (Munster, Germany), I 83 St. Ann's Widow Home (Philadelphia, Pa.), 2 1 0 St. Bernard's Academy (Cohoes, N.Y.), '35

St. Bridget's Half-Orphanage (St. Louis, Mo.), 207 St. Brigid's School (Watervliet, N.Y.), '32-33

St. Catherine's. See College of St. Catherine St. Joseph's Academy ("Madame Celestine's School"), 5 o- 12, r 61, r 64 St. Joseph's Academy (Prescott, Xriz.), 170 St. Joseph's Academy (St. Paul, Minn.), 101

St. Joseph's Home for Boys (St. Louis, Mo.), 54, 206 St. Joseph's Hospital (Kansas City, Mo.), 102,104 St. Joseph's Hospital (St. Paul, Minn.), 200, 2 I 3 St. Joseph's Infant Home (Troy, N.Y.), 214 St. Joseph's Institute for the Deaf, 47 St. Joseph's Orphan Home for Girls (Kansas City, Mo.), 286 (n. 5 6) St. Louis, Mo., 43, 240 (n. 10); as home of general government motherhouse for the CSJs, 57 St. Z ~ mObserver i (newspaper), 42 St. Louis province, of the CSJs, 87

St. Xfarl's Academy (Los Xngeles, Cahf.), I j 5 St. hlary's Home (Bmghamton, N.Y.), 2 1 3 , 299 (n. 100) St. Xlary's Hospital (Amsterdam, N.Y.), 201, 214, 295 (n. 45) St. hlarl's School (Waverly, hlinn.), '33-34, 271 (n. '7) St. hlary's School of Nursing (Mlnneapolls, hbnn.), 201 St. Paul, hIinn., arrival of the CSJs in, 97>99-100 St. Paul province, of the CSJs, 87 St. Teresa's Academy (Kansas Cit); hlo.), 102, 104, 166, 170; dispute over ownership of, 176-77 St. Teresa's College ( n o ~ v;hila College, Kansas Cin; Xlo.), I 8 5, 290 (n. 89) St. Vincent de Paul (Carondelet parish school), 5 3 Salaries -for French clergy, paid by the state, 3T -for nuns: in American parochial schools, 32, 144-43, 276 (nn. 5 5 , 57); paid by public boards of education, I 32; stipends paid during Napoleonic era, 37; in orphanages or other social work, 212, 213, 217 Salpointe, Jean-Baptiste (bishop o f Tucson, Ark.), I 09 Saulnier, Rev Edmund, 44,46-47, 241 (nn. 19, 20) Schillo, Genevieve, 245 (n. 5 8) School boards, diocesan, I 5 0 School Illamial~forthe L'se 4 the Sisters of .St. /ospph, I 38-39> 27 j (n. 30) Schools. See Education Science courses, offered in antebellum Catholic female academies, I 6 5 -66, 283 (nn. 21, 24) "Science for Ladies, Classics for Gentlemen" (ToUey), 1 6 5, 2 8 3 (nn. 2 I , 24) Scott, Anne Firor, 204- 5

Second Vatican Council, and changes in roles within the Church, 223, 2 2 3 , 300 (n. 2) Seiler, Sister Perpetua, I I 8, I 19- 22, 266 (nn. 81, 82) Seminaries, female. See Academies Settlement houses: bonding of women associated with, 77; run by the CSJs, 21 1

Shelly, Xlargaret, I 8 3 Shockley, hlother Assissium, 8 5 - 86, 2 5 4 (n. 64) "Singularity," 80-8 I , 198, 279 (n. 97); and compromises of nuns worlung for higher degrees, I 86 Sisterhoods, non-Catholic, 10, 191 Sisters' College (Catholic University), summer courses for teaching nuns, 150, 155, 156,137 Sisters of Charit?; 43, I z j -24, 243 (n. 43); as nursing order, I 9 I , 1 0 2 Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur (Trinity College), I 80 Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJs). .Yee CSJs Sisters of St. Joseph of Cleveland, 91 Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, I I I , 274 (n. 7') Sisters of the Common Life, I 4,2 j j (n. 6) Sisters of the Holy Cross, 86 Sklar, Kathryn IOsh, 77 Smallpox epidemic, I 94 Smith, Sister Bernadette, I I 2, I I j Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, 78, I 20, r 5 o

(n. 32) Society of Jesus (Jesuits), 234 (n. 17); lZledailleS xvork with early CSJ communities, 2 I - 2 2 Soldiers: attitudes toward nursing nuns during Civil War, 62 -63, 1 93; as escorts for fund-raising tours in the Vlesr, I 20- 2 I ; fear of in seventeenth-century France, I 6

South, Catholic parish schools in, 141, 274 (n. 41) Southwestern frontier missions, as CSJ activities in Arizona, I o j - I 8 Spanish-American War, CSJ nurses in, 195-96, 200, 229 (n. 9) Spaulding, John Lancaster (bishop of Peoria, Ill.), 181, 288 (n. 68) Steinmetz, Sister Honorata, 142 Stephan, Rev. J. A. (director of Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions), I 17, 263 (n. 44)>265 (n. 70) Subservience, as perceived virtue of female teachers, I jo Sullivan, Sister Winifred, 63 Superior general, CSJ, creation of post of as controversial, 5 7 -62 Support system, convent, mentors for fledgling teachers as, 78, I j 3, I j 5 Svenson, Sister Kathla, 172, 201 Taylor, Judith, 20, 24 Teachers: antebellum academies as sources for, I 6 I ; apprenticeships for novices, 77-78; comparison of nuns and public school teachers, I j I - 5 2, 278 (n. 79); Irish Americans in public schools, 141; nuns as bilingual teachers, 141-42, 274 (n. 43) Teaching: establishment of Catholic schools for girls, 103, 259 (n. 20); as major area of CSJ activity, j4; nuns used in public schools, I 3 2 - 34, 27 I (nn. 14, 17); original French concepts, 30. See also Academies; Education Tender, Leslie Woodcock, 6 Teresa of Avila, 17, 83 Terror, Reign of (1793 -94), execution of CSJ nuns in, 36- 37, 238 (n. 85) Tertiaries, in religious organizations, I 4, 2 3 3 (n. 6) Textbooks, use in nineteenth-century grammar schools, 139 -40, 270 (n. 7) Thompson, Margaret Susan, 5 8, 86

326

1

Index

1,000

W g s dr,ooo Teachers.. . (book),

IT4-5j Tolley, Kim, 16j -66, 283 (nn. 21,24) Trades: taught to American orphans, 209; taught to French orphan girls, 2 j, 39; vocational courses for Native American students, I I 3 Travel: opportunities for nuns, compared to secular women, 2.2 I - 22; restrictions imposed during the early I goes, 2 2 j - 24; via railroads, I 8 3, 21 3, 266 (n. 78), 299 (n. 88) Trent, Council of: as attempt to enforce cloistered living of women religious, I 3 - 14, 2 3 2 (nn. I , 3); on doctrine of good works, 17; on instruction of the faithful, 30 Trinity College (Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur), I 80 Tucson, Ariz. Terr., CSJ acttvities in, roj-18 Tucson Daih Star (newspaper), 21 4 Tuition: college costs for summer courses, I 5 5, I 57; for preRevolutionary French religious schools, 32; waived for poor American Catholics, j o Turner, Victor, 76

Universities, state, nuns taking summer courses at, I j j, 279 (n. 92) University of Chicago (Chicago, Ill.), degrees for women from, I 84, 289 (n. 83) University of Missouri (Columbia), nuns attending summer school at, I 5 5 Upper class, attitudes of in French convents, 24, 28 - 29 Ursulines, 18, 160; destruction of school of in Charlestown, Mass., 1-2, 43, 228 (n. z), 7-40 (n. 8) Van Gennep, Arnold, 76 Victorian era, concepts of work suitable for women in, 80, 190

Vilaine, Sister Philomene, 39, I 68,

2j

3

(n. 19) Visitandines (Visitation order), I 8 - I 9 Vocational courses: for French girls, 2 j , 39; for Native American boys, I I 3; as later academy track, 166-67; for orphans, 209 Vocations, religious, 68 -70, 247 (n. 5); decrease in twentieth century, 2 2 j Vows, perpetual: effect on women's property rights, 232 (n. 3); taken by nuns, 9 - I o Waldron, Sister Flavia, I 3 1 Walsh, Mother Bernard, 2 I j Walsh, Sister Irene, 142 Walsh, Sister Mary, I 99 Ward, Mary, 2 36 (n. 3 9) Wendling, Sister Liboria, 147 Werden, Sister Hyacinth, I 83, 289 (n. 80) West Troy Union Free School (Watervliet, N.Y.), leasing of St. Brigid's School as, I 32 - 33 Weyand, Sister Evangelists, 27j (n. 47) Wheeling, W.Va., staffing of first CSJ hospitalin, 191, 192-93

Widows, CSJ homes for, 2 10- I I Willard, Emma, 161, 162, 164 Winnebago Indian Mission, I or Wisconsin, normal school regulations in, I 16-17, 279 (n. 100) Women, I 63; aid given to homeless or destitute, 2 I I ; nineteenth-century academies for, I 60-62, 280 (nn. I , 2, j); role of Catholic laywomen, 21 j - I 7; roles in religious organizations, 3 -4; "scientific" view of brain's capacity, 178, I 82; St. Paul's views on role of, 14; use of term "sister" or "mother," 77; Victorian era concept of suitability of work, 80, I 90; working-class, provisions for temporary care of children of, 207. See also Nuns; Nursing; Protestantswomen; Teachers Woody, Thomas, 280 (nn. 2, 1) Work experiences, of nuns, compared to secular women, 2 2 I - 2 2 World War I, CSJ-trained secular nurses serving in, I 98, 274 (n. 30) Yellow fever epidemics, I 94, I 79